


Writers' Strike

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Artist Dean, Blood, Conventions, Cosplay, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Gore, Horror, Humor, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nerdiness, Recreational Drug Use, Religious Themes, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Writer Castiel, Writer Sam, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:24:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This year, the ghost town of Ardmore, South Dakota, is home to the sci-fi convention ApocalyptiCon.  Dean and Sam Winchester, creators of the hit comic book series Supernatural, fully expect it to be just like every other con on the circuit: an endless parade of awkward conversations, obsessed fans, and the increasingly popular panels which pit Dean against insufferable author Castiel Novak.</p><p>They're about to discover, however, that this is one convention that lives up to its name.</p><p>It's the end of the world, baby, and these three are going out with a bang.</p><p>ETA 05/23/16: [waves] Still here. Haven't forgotten. <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the ever-lovely [betty days](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/) for being my beta, my cheerleader, and an excellent friend.
> 
> Please do not repost/copy/duplicate this work to other sites. That's called theft.

Ardmore, South Dakota, died along with the rails that run alongside it. It bled out slowly, losing residents to age and modernity. The heart of this town no longer beats; many of its veins now run unnamed; the walls of its former cells lie largely in ruin, collapsed by plaque-weight and the detritus of years. Save the occasional curious urban explorer, the only life that moves here with any regularity belongs to a squinting herd of antelope and a few stubborn black birds that squawk their way up and down Sioux Street. Their complaints fly unheeded into a cloudless sky. A warm, dry Dakota wind blows in behind them, bending the tall, vibrant green prairie grass that pokes up between the broken pavement.

Each day that passes here is fundamentally the same as the day before, possessed by a sense of lonely regularity. Cars rot in the fields behind dilapidated abandoned houses, tires reclaimed by the ground, their glaringly mismatched hoods and trunks popped open in a rusted-color rainbow, as if surprised at being left behind. Uncurtained windows of empty buildings stare across equally bare roads in eternal contest. The groaning of settling foundations is the only conversation here among the dead. No one brings flowers or pays respect; the only monuments are the corpses themselves.

Unceremoniously dumped into the lap of history, Ardmore has long been discarded.

Forgotten.

Silent.

One cursory glance down Hat Creek Avenue, however, would say quite the opposite.

A woman shambles slowly up the lane in knee-high red boots. She picks her way through the rubbled road sightlessly, long blond pigtails whipping into her ghastly-pale face with the breeze. A large red bow, hanging from her collar at an impossible angle, flaps uselessly along with her jerking movement. The white bodice of her short-skirted dress is ripped open.

Upon closer inspection, so is her torso.

Blood drips from the torn fingers of once pristinely-bleached, elbow-length gloves. Viscera trails behind her like a trail of bread crumbs, leading the gaze up from the dusty street and along her exposed thigh to follow the rope of uncoiled intestine that clings there, wet and glistening in the late summer sun. Her slackened jaw exposes a row of teeth, scarlet teeth, blood crusted around chapped lips; lines of pink saliva have dried in neat rows down her chin and neck. 

She rounds the corner, turns left, and encounters the rest of her horde. 

They cheer and wave her over for a photo op.

For the next four days, while ApocalyptiCon reigns, Ardmore will live again.

***

Dean Winchester loves conventions. He loves the attention of his adoring fans; he loves the elaborate costumes; he loves the shitty food and the crowds and the camaraderie. There is nothing he does not adore about the convention-hopping life.

Well, maybe he could do without the smell of days-old sweat hanging in the air, but hey, nothing's perfect.

ApocalyptiCon is a very different kind of convention, however. Where organizers usually put him and his brother, Sam, up in a hotel for the weekend, this time, they're in Tent City half a mile out of town. Portable toilets are set up at strategic intervals; there are portable camp showers, too, but significantly fewer, a fact Dean tries not to think about. Man's got to be clean to be on his game, and at a convention, Dean is a first-string player. He's used to mirrors and mini-fridges; this is a little too Bonnaroo for his tastes.

This morning, he rolled out of cot, cursing the lack of appropriately-sized memory foam inserts as he went. Dean pulled on his favorite pair of Levi's and a maroon v-neck tee. Today calls for leather--brown cowboy boots, brown hat, and his signature thigh-length leather jacket. The holster for his knife even matches, and, though he would never admit to being proud of that, he is. Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man, after all.

Except for today, apparently. Today, Dean's struck out over and over again. Even his fail-safe sci-fi pick-ups have failed, and Captain Kirk has never let him down. But Dean Winchester is nothing if not tenacious. He's never _not_ gotten laid at a convention, and after ten years on the circuit, he's not looking to change that.

"We've got to risk implosion," he whispers to Sailor Moon, fresh from in front of the cameras. "We may explode into the biggest fireball this part of the galaxy, but we've got to take that one-in-a-million chance." He winks at her with eyes that mirror the prairie grass. Dean would normally rub the back of his neck now, maybe play with his hair a bit and give a non-committal shrug (the fangirls seem to go for that), but it doesn't work with the hat.

She brushes the hair out of her face and gives him her best side-eye. Dean is a survivor, though; he knows when to change tactics.

"Great intestines! What is that, rubber?"

"Pantyhose and bedsheets."

"Huh. No kidding," he says to her back as she brushes past him and walks on down the street. Dean sighs, sets a smile back on his face, and heads into what used to be the

Ardmore Volunteer Fire Department.

***

Sam Winchester hates conventions. He hates setting up the booth in the dealers' area; he hates the panels where he pretends to care about his work; he hates practicing what to say so that he doesn't accidentally piss someone off. Sam saves a special brand of hate for his fans and their questionable taste. Why someone would choose to consume the _Supernatural_ comics he and his brother have churned out for the past decade, he has no earthly idea.

No, there is nothing good nor redeeming about the convention-going lifestyle. For the fiftieth time since he woke up, Sam curses the day his brother "saved" him from Stanford. He never meant to go into the family business; pulp horror comics were never really Sam's mug of brew. And yet, here he is, shilling like a carnival barker.

A very, very unenthusiastic carnival barker.

A carnival barker who always ends up setting up the carnival by himself, as his partner is too busy chasing sideshow tail to care about the actual reason they're stuck here.

Sam Winchester also hates carnivals.

He picks absentmindedly at the black drape covering the table, slouching down far enough in his folding chair to hide behind a stack of t-shirts. He tries to angle the sign which loudly proclaims, “Coming soon! Our 200th issue!” into a position that will hide his six-foot-four profile. When Sam notices that, by slumping in his seat, he's only managed to make his Converse-clad feet stick out into the aisle, he reflexively runs his hands through his long brown hair, sighs, and gives up.

It's Thursday, he realizes as he scans the room, finding it largely empty. Not another sold-out soul to commiserate with. ApocalyptiCon, still in its infancy, hasn't attracted many big names. Then again, Sam thinks, someone would really have to piss off their agent to get booked here in the first place, out in the boonies with a bunch of media-obsessed nuts.

“I don't know what I did to deserve this,” he mumbles to no one in particular.

“I'm still trying to work that out for myself,” comes a deep growl to his right. Sam, after determining that, no, he is not having a heart attack, turns to find his booth neighbor hauling in boxes of fan-ready paraphernalia.

“Dean might be right, Cas. We do need to get you a bell.”

The mention of his brother's name earns Sam a scowl from his fellow writer. Castiel J. Novak, self-published author of the _Garrison_ series, stands out like a sore thumb in his ill-fitting suit and enormous tan overcoat. He wore it to his first convention as a guest, and has continued to wear it to every convention for the past six years. (“I think the fans really like it, Sam,” he'd finally admitted. “I tried a different outfit last summer, and there were apparently many distressed comments put on tumblers.”) His dark brown hair is, as always, an ungainly mess, but Sam knows better than to offer his leave-in conditioner.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Hey, Cas. At least, I assume that's who you are, since you've left your name tag blank.” Sam gestures to where a blue-bordered label sticks haphazardly to Cas' left lapel. Cas glances down, frowns, and pulls out his best silver signing Sharpie. He leans his head back, and, with a look of intense concentration, proceeds to write, “This is Jimmy Novak, M.Arts,” upside-down and sideways.

It's a good allegory for their lives, really, Sam muses, so he decides not to mention it.

“Do you remember me now?” Castiel asks seriously.

“You're kind of hard to forget, Cas. For starters, the overcoat.” That earns another frown, one that crinkles the eyes that his following has deemed to be, “the bluest blue to ever blue.”

“I told you, Sam, that my readers are--”

“--very fond of the coat,” Sam finishes for him. “I haven't forgotten. I was going to say that you're the only author I know that brings milk crates packed with mason jars of honey to sell.”

“A man must wear many hats,” Cas states solemnly, setting down his crate and beginning to remove his overcoat and suit jacket. “Besides, beekeeping is a beautiful-but-dying art, and I am as proud of my bees as I am my books. Why shouldn't I promote both?” He folds the jackets over the back of his chair before picking the box back up, placing it on the ground, and kneeling to unpack it.

“No reason you shouldn't. Just wond--”

“Dude, Sammy, did you see zombie Sailor Moon?”

Sam sighs, and turns to see his brother striding excitedly towards their booth. “What? Oh, no. No, I hadn't noticed.”

“How did you not notice her?” Dean asks, incredulous. “She's got a skirt up to here and cleavage out to there. That bow is defying some serious gravity.”

“Well, Dean, some of us have been busy doing _actual work_.” Dean waves his hands dismissively, rolling his eyes. “Besides, she's not exactly the only scantily-clad zombie here.”

“Trust me,” the slightly shorter Winchester replies, “Trust me, I know. I'm honestly a little terrified at how turned on I am.”

“Sam, what is a 'Sailor Moon'?” Cas pops up from behind his booth, hefting a stack of his latest novel, _The Man Who Would Be King_. He meets Dean's gaze warily, as if faced with a feral beast. Cas narrows his eyes and drops the stack on the table with a resounding _clunk_ ; they settle like a poorly-planned game of Tetris. Dean's reaction is even less graceful as his head falls back to stare resolutely at the ceiling, silently pleading for the earth to open up and swallow Cas whole.

Sam honestly can't remember a time when they didn't despise each other.

“Aw, fucking great. We get to share lot...” Dean glances down at the palm of his hand before continuing. “Lot 22c with Our Father Castiel, who art in boredom.”

“I never actually wore the cloth,” Cas steadily replies, rolling the sleeves of his white button-up neatly to his elbows. “Besides, it's Jimmy to you.”

“Look, just because you don't have the balls to use your real name on your work doesn't mean it no longer exists.”

“Just because my name still exists doesn't mean you're allowed to use it.” Cas steps forcefully into what Dean refers to as his, “personal shielding,” the toe of his loafer bumping into Dean's boot. His eyes never stray, even when Dean's finger inevitably winds up pointed in his face.

“Your name,” he says, venomously, “Is fucking Castiel, so I'm gonna call you fucking Castiel. _Capiche_?” Cas chuckles under his breath.

“Oh, I 'capiche,'” he says, turning away. Cas picks up the empty box and pushes past Dean, walking back towards the entrance to collect the rest of his merchandise. He throws out over his shoulder as he walks away, “But that doesn't mean I'll ever answer to it when you call.”

Dean continues staring as his nemesis walks away. As per always, it takes Sam a few minutes to get his attention. He will always be convinced that, when the planetary bodies known as Dean and Cas move into each other's respective orbits, the rest of the universe ceases to exist.

“Seriously, Dean?”

“What?”

“What was that all about?”

“That was me,” Dean grins, proudly, “Getting the trash away from our booth.” Sam rests his forehead on the edge of the table; at least the floor understands him. They've spoken much today.

“Joseph, Mary, and Josh,” Sam begins, exasperated. “Can you at least _try_ to get along with Novak? I know you didn't finish high school, but I'm fairly certain that they covered manners in kindergarten.”

“Gee, I dunno, Sam.” Dean sneers at him, rubbing his chin as if actually considering the possibility. “You gonna let me start drinking _now_?”

“Dean--”

“Holy shit. It's the green chicks from _Star Trek_!” Just like that, Sam knows he's lost him. And, just like always, he simply goes along with the unrestrained might that is his older brother.

“I thought there was only one.”

“Not when it's twins cosplaying,” Dean grins, whipping his head back around. “How do I look?”

Sam takes a moment to look him over before answering, “I don't know, Dean. What, exactly, are you going for?”

“I'm Tallahassee, obviously.” He looks very proud of himself, and if there's anything Sam truly enjoys about conventions, it's deflating his brother's enormous ego by criticizing his costumes. This time, however, Sam honestly can't place the outfit.

“Who?”

“You know, Tallahassee. Woody Harrelson, from _Zombieland_.”

“Why?”

“Sam,” Dean scoffs, “The convention's theme is zombies.”

“So?”

“So I'm participating, Mister One-Word Wonder!” Sam bites at his lip, considering the new information while letting the idiotic insult roll off.

“But you're still wearing your jacket.”

“I always wear this jacket.”

“Yes, but Woody's was shorter. Black.” Sam pauses, then adds, “Less Dad's.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean briefly concedes. Sam watches the carefully-practiced bravado briefly falter before slamming back in place. “Well, he ain't me. No kick-ass jacket, no kick-ass Dean. Now, c'mon,” he says, stepping back, arms sweeping wide down his body. “How do I look?”

“Like a macho, chauvinistic, horny douchebag who is incapable of dressing himself.” Cas punctuates by slamming another box of books on his own table. Dean jumps, then immediately pretends he didn't, settling back into himself. “Since you always look like that,” continues Cas, smirking, “I assume you're good to go.”

“Man, fuck you, too, Novak.” He turns on his heel like a child rebuked, and stomps off in the direction of his much-fantasized alien women. Sam shakes his head. New town; new convention; same old shit. Dean will bounce back the second he leaves the building. He always does.

“And how are you, Sam?”

“Honestly?”

“Always,” Cas nods, arranging his jars of honey in neat rows.

“Well, I hate conventions. I hate the fans. I hate my work.” Sam looks sideways at Cas. “I'm starting to hate my brother.”

“I've always hated your brother.”

“You know,” starts Sam, standing up just enough to scoot his chair over behind Cas' booth. It scrapes across the concrete floor, long and loud. “You know, I keep meaning to ask. What's the story there? Dean's never told me, but something has to have happened between you two. I just can't figure out what.”

Cas opens his mouth, apparently thinks better, and shuts it again. His blue eyes are slightly downcast. He fiddles purposelessly with a bit of raffia on one of the jars, seemingly lost in thought, before suddenly shaking his head.

“There's really nothing to tell, Sam.”

“Come on, Cas; you can't expect me to believe that.” Castiel shrugs sheepishly, but makes no sign of responding. “I mean, you two have been sniping at each other for _six years_ now. Convention organizers even stick you on panels together because your fights are so popular. Epic, even.” Sam leans in. “And you can't deny that there's some definite unresolved tension there.”

“Sam,” Cas says, voice pointedly even, “I would like to remain friends with you.”

“What is it your fans call it?” continues Sam, pretending not to hear. “Something like Nacho... Novest...”

“Novachester,” supplies Cas.

“Novachester, right.”

“I...” Castiel's eyes dart around the room. “I really don't think I should talk about it.”

“But I tell you _everything_!” complains Sam. He emphasizes, counting on his fingers. “I told you about the taco incident. I told you about the time he smoked with Don. Hell, I even told you about that damn Amazon-looking chick that swore him off one-nighters for _two years_ \--”

“I do love tormenting him with that one,” Cas interrupts, an evil glint in his blue eyes. “Did he ever say what actually happened?”

“No, he just had this shifty look in his eyes. Kept rubbing his wrists and mumbling about, 'things he never needed reaffirmed about himself,' or something like that. Next thing I know, convention season's rolled back around, and he's calling every ex-hook-up he ever deemed 'boring'. I still can't believe he keeps all those numbers. Can't keep track of a due date, and yet his black book remains meticulously organized. But, if you ask me, I think that-- Hey. No.” Sam suddenly leans back in his chair, squaring a knowing look at his friend. “Uh-uh.”

“What?”

“You're taking advantage of my tendency to ramble and trying to change the subject,” he accuses.

“I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Sam,” who opens his mouth to plead again, only to be interrupted by the dark cloud that is currently the eldest Winchester. Dean settles in behind their booth, rattling the other chair and pushing it up on its two back legs, arms crossed across his chest.

“This convention officially sucks,” says the storm.

“Aw, did poor widdle Deanie-weanie get shotted down?” Sam responds, grinning.

“There's _nothing here_ ,” Dean shoots back. “No cell service, no cable, no _pie_ , now no sex--”

“Aw, he did! He did get shotted down!”

“Shuddup, Sammy.” Dean's enormous frown is likely visible from satellite. “Probably would have wound up with green paint on my dick, anyway.”

“That would have been truly tragic.” Cas, as always, is cool, calm, collected.

Conniving.

_Combative._

“See, Sam? Novak knows what's wh--”

“It would almost certainly have clashed with your panties.”

Sam has never seen Dean blush for anyone but Cas. It's a slow-crawling spread of crimson as all four legs of the chair slam to the floor. He opens and shuts his mouth and shifts nearly imperceptibly. Seemingly unaware, he starts to rub at his wrists while his eyes dart straight to the floor.

“Oh yeah?” Dean finally responds, remembering himself. “Well... Well maybe it would!” And, just as quickly as it had arrived, the storm front stands up and moves out, but not before casting a scathing glance back at the _Garrison_ booth and its owner.

“And that,” Sam finally says, breaking the silence, “is a perfect example of why I do the writing.”

“His come-backs always have been rather poor.”

“It doesn't help that he always loses his cool in front of you.”

Cas continues to watch after Dean, apparently not hearing Sam. His smile is smug, hands settling into his pants pockets. After a few minutes, he simply offers, “His face.”

“What?”

“I never get tired of seeing that look on his face.”

“Oh, when you fluster him?”

“No. When I've _bested_ him.”

“You're never going to tell me, are you?”

“It's unlikely,” Cas says, looking down at Sam, folded in his chair. “Not impossible, but very unlikely.”

***

By the time Dean starts back to the fire department, it's late afternoon, and he's struck out another twenty times. As it's still the unofficial first day of the convention, that accounts for approximately...

Well, everyone, really. At least ninety-five percent with a given margin of error.

Dean hasn't even been terribly picky today, given that he's absolutely furious to be forced to breathe the same air as Cas-fucking-Novak. There's never been anything but animosity between the two of them. The very first thing he'd said to him? It sure as hell wasn't, “Hello, Dean.”

That irritating motherfucker had looked him up and down with a squint, cold and calculating. It still made Dean's skin crawl to think about it; he'd felt like he was under a microscope, and, while he loved attention, that was just... Off-putting. It threw him off-kilter, made his brain lurch. When Cas had finally met his eyes, it was with in intense, freezing blue stare, and Dean had nearly been deceived into thinking that the gorgeous new guy he was introducing himself to wasn't a complete and total _asshole_.

When Castiel opened his mouth, however, it hadn't been to say, “Hello, Dean.” There were none of the niceties or soft-naturedness that he was spoken of having. Instead of accepting Dean's hand to shake, he'd tutted and pushed it away, having the audacity to say, “Don't bother; I'd rather your jacketful of daddy issues not rub off on me.”

Dean had never been struck silent by pure, unfiltered, bewildered rage in his entire life.

“I mean, they aren't just _on_ your sleeve. They are, quite literally, _the sleeve_. It's actually rather fascinating,” Cas added, smiling oddly as he slightly tilted his head to the side. He put his hands in his pockets, turned, and walked away from a dumb-founded Dean.

And when Dean had lunged forward, arm stretched to grab that dick's shoulder, because nobody-but- _nobody_ walks away from him? When Castiel had wheeled sharply back around on his heels and grabbed Dean's wrist before it made contact? When he'd drug him in by it, leaned in and growled, “I don't typically play with my food, Winchester, but, since you insist, I'll make an exception,” then left Dean there staring at the door like an idiot, rubbing his wrists and wondering what the hell had just happened?

That was when the game had started, and Dean is still at an utter loss as to what the rules actually are. Whatever they may be, after six years of back-and-forth, he's damn sure that he's losing. The evidence is provided often enough, typically in front of a gathered crowd or at least in front of someone who matters. Speaking of, his brother is no help whatsoever; Dean knows that Sam essentially feeds Cas ammunition to use against him, likely playing some twisted game of his own, blissfully unaware that he aids and abets a mortal foe. Not that it matters; Dean's of the growing opinion―one shared by a vast majority of the Garrison fan base―that the board was set against him from the start. Castiel is going to call check on his every move at every panel at every convention for the rest of his fucking life.

All of this, on its own, would be enough to drive a good man mad.

What absolutely infuriates Dean, however, is how much he _enjoys_ it.

Dean always prowls at conventions, but never more so than at the ones Cas also attends. A good competition always gets him worked up, and, as everyone knows, his fights with Castiel are the stuff of convention legend. All that adrenaline has to go _somewhere_ ; in Dean's case, it serves to fuel his libido. Now, he's full up, but apparently stalled at the start. He can't even manage to get himself into someone's bed in order to end up disappointed.

And that's just the problem, isn't it? At some stop along the line, Dean stopped putting his heart into the art of the pick-up. Sex had stopped being as satisfying as he and Cas repeatedly ripping into each other. He's done a few things (not to mention a few people) he'd rather forget trying to find that same level of intensity, and so he'd given up and settled for just getting off. That he has been so horribly incapable of picking up a (any) freaky fan in order to do so is beyond frustrating and will likely continue to _be_ frustrating, because everyone knows that you don't jack off at a convention. That's like admitting you've completely given up, and Dean never surrenders.

Never.

_Never._

So he hates Cas, because he hates himself for being so affected in the first place. Dean welcomes every opportunity to take it out on that smarmy, stuck-up son-of-a-bitch, but all that does is throw the dice to start the next turn. The problem is that what turns is inevitably Dean's crank, and this time _he can't roll his way out of the goddamn jungle_.

“But I don't understaaand that ref-er-ence,” Dean supplies in a nasal whine for the Cas in his head . “Even though I've been a prissy little bitch for four-billion years, I simply can't bother to ever Google anything.” He kicks up dust behind him as he ambles down the nearly abandoned street. Dean's since abandoned the hat, “manly” jewelry, and an ostentatious silver belt buckle that has proven to be a liar; even with the gigantic metal shamrock, he knows that, today, he's not getting lucky. He even changed back into his normal, matte black, steel-toed work boots, wondering the whole time how practical it was to have one's toes constantly pinched in the middle of a blood-thirsty zombie fight. Regardless, however well the ensemble may have worked for Woody, it's done nothing for Dean. Although, now that he's devoting some actual thought to it, Woody never hooked up in the movie. Maybe he should have gone with--

“Shut up, Winchester,” interrupts another Cas, more accurate than the first, “Rather rude of you to assume I want to listen to your internal chatter. Besides, I've just turned forty, and I don't see what mathematics has to do with your previous supposition.”

Dean suddenly realizes that he is, yet again, holding a conversation in his head with not one, but two imaginary Novaks, and begins to wonder if he's been driven madder than he originally thought.

***

The Ardmore Volunteer Fire Department is the only building in town with a coat of fresh red paint, working locks, intact windows, and a generator. It has a double garage, each entrance large enough for a fire truck with operating, blindingly white shuttered doors; a normal, equally white door sits adjacent, and is currently propped open by a cinder block. Inside is one expansive area with smooth, bare concrete floors, divided only by rows of folding tables. The six fans plugged into the power strip attached to the one outlet sputter and wheeze. They seem to have no other purpose than to push around the warm air, their blades only agitating enough to generate an occasional anemic breeze. The old fluorescent lights cast an odd yellow tint to everything they hit, particularly when those over the second row of tables flicker in and out with a hum.

Lot 22c, where the _Supernatural_ and _Garrison_ booths are crammed together, lies, of course, right in the middle of the second row.

The department-turned-dealers' room is still largely empty, to Sam's great relief. After all, the only thing worse than making small talk with fans is making small talk with other con invitees. Thankfully for Sam, Cas' rivalry with Dean led to convention planners sticking them as closely together as possible as often as possible. While he's sure it only happens because having Cas and Dean shouting at each other across the room is much more disruptive than having all of the posturing in one concentrated area, it comes with the added benefit of Sam never being stuck attempting cordiality with other vendors, because no one else is willing to share space with them.

Out of necessity, Cas and Sam became acquainted, but Sam is now happy to count the quirky author as his best friend. Sam practically runs the _Garrison_ booth at most conventions in addition to his own (Dean gets no ownership, Sam has decided, because Dean is never _there_ ), which leaves Cas free to engage in lengthy discussions on obscure topics with his odd fan base. More importantly, it means Sam doesn't have to do the same with his own fans, with the added benefit of being able to avoid everyone else within the so-called “Novachester blast radius.”

Right now, while hardly any one is in attendance, and while Cas is off having a rather tangential conversation with the moderator for tomorrow morning's panel, it means that Sam can play _Don't Starve_ on his tablet without interruption. He's survived to day forty-three so far, scavenging in the wilderness, killing monsters, and building shelter. Sam's aware that he shouldn't play it at conventions―not because his time would be better spent elsewhere, but because it makes him actually consider running away and roughing it an acceptable alternative to his current life―but it beats how he's spent the rest of the day. One can only watch the steam rise from overheated, broken pavement for so long.

Even now, this late in the day, the air above the road looks hazy. Sam briefly wonders how many elaborately-costumed attendees will succumb to heat stroke, or perhaps madness, if Dean's current state of mind is an accurate gauge.

He watches his brother walk back in, talking to the voices in his head that must certainly be Cas, if the muscles twitching on Dean's face and his aborted gesticulation are any evidence to judge by. It's almost like he's praying, Sam thinks, a strange, ever-changing litany of potential verbal abuse that Dean recites, rehearses. Whatever jump-started this strange rivalry, Sam knows that Dean's become gradually more and more obsessed with it.

“Keys, Sammy!” He sighs; this song-and-dance is horribly familiar.

“No.”

“It's my car.”

“No,” says Sam, more firmly this time. “You're not leaving the convention. We have a contract, which we have agreed to and signed. A contract negotiated by our agent--”

“Fucking Fergus,” interjects Dean.

“--whose barely-legal son you had sex with, you perv, which I've finally determined is why _I_ am stuck here, and, as God is my witness, _you are going to be stuck here with me_.”

“I'm not going to leave!” Dean huffs, throwing his hands in the air. “I just need to--”

“Oh God, no.” All of the color drains from Sam's face as he slowly rises to stand. “It's her.”

“Who?” Dean asks, turning his head to follow his brother's gaze.

“It's―don't look, Dean!―It's Becky Rosen,” explains Sam, producing a pair of shades, a scarf, and a beanie from his messenger bag. He stuffs the tablet in without saving his game; it's his own survival that matters now. If he hurries, he can disguise himself long enough to make it to the back door, where he will then make haste to the Impala, jump inside, lock the doors, and hope he suffocates from the heat before Becky inevitably catches up. “Well,” Sam starts, muffled by the scarf that now covers the lower half of his face, his sunglasses sitting awkwardly across the bridge of his nose as he quickly tucks his hair beneath the hat, “I hate to run out and leave you all alone to man the booth, but I--”

“You will not, you little b--”

“Be-cky!” The scarf slips off Sam's face when his mouth turns up at the corners as if pulled by puppet-strings, or perhaps sculpted by a medical professional. It's certainly plastic enough.

“Hi, Sam!” Becky's smile, though slightly manic, is full of perfectly straight white teeth. Becky's perfectly straight blonde hair falls uniformly down her shoulders. Becky's pants have perfectly straight pleats. Becky's fan-crazed eyes are boring a perfectly straight hole through Sam's skull.

Castiel had asked Sam to describe Becky once. Then and to this day, the only word Sam had been able to come up with was, “terrifying.”

“Hey, there... You,” he chokes out, at last. Sam can feel his hair starting to plaster itself to his forehead beneath his hat. He can hear his brother, damn him, snickering, and he flicks him a glare. This is no laughing matter; this is Becky Rosen, self-appointed owner, operator, and, he hopes, only member of the Sam Winchester Super Scary Fan Club. A club he is now sure will exist simply because he thought of it, for if a Stepford Wife and an internet meme ever hit it off, the hyper-inquisitive, insatiable, unstoppable force it produced would surely be Becky Rosen.

“Bitchface number forty-seven,” she mumbles in reverence.

“What?”

“I can't believe we're running into each other again!” She's practically bouncing.

“Yeah,” Sam squeaks, fumbling his sunglasses off his nose. “This is five conventions in a row now, right? On opposite sides of the country?”

“And Vancouver!” adds Dean, helpful as always. Sam scrunches his face in disgust.

“Ugh. Don't remind me of Vancouver. If I see one more moose in my life, it will be too soon.”

“But you're just like a moose!” Becky responds. “So tall. Strong.” She sighs, leaning in to lay her head on Sam's arm. “Majestic.”

Sam makes a noise that he will forever swear sounded nothing like, “Meep.”

“I can't believe fate keeps throwing us together like this, can you?”

“It's... certainly... something.”

“Looks like you've got the booth on lock-down after all, Sammy.” Dean jingles the keys in front of his face, having picked them out of Sam's pocket while distracted by Becky. Sam gives him a pointed look of, “don't you dare leave me,” which Dean returns with a wink and a spring in his step as he walks away.

“Do you wax between conventions?” Becky asks, hesitantly poking at Sam's jaw. “You have absolutely no stubble.”

That decides Sam. He _definitely_ hates his brother.

“Oh, wait! Dean!” Becky grabs the sleeve of Dean's jacket. “I need you, too.”

“I do believe that's the first time I've heard that today,” Dean chuckles ruefully. Becky rolls her eyes and makes a disgusted sneer.

“No, I'm here on business, not pleasure,” she explains, pulling a clipboard out from underneath her arm and a cheap stick pen from behind her ear. “Chuck needs to see all of the guests down at Brick Hall for orientation before our hard-open tomorrow morning.

“Besides,” Becky adds, “my body belongs to Sam.”

***

“Brick Hall” is a two-story crumbling box that sits down at the end of the same road on the opposite corner. No one's quite sure what it used to be, though the most popular theory is a storefront, given the large holes in the front of the building where bay windows undoubtedly used to live. There are a few unshattered panes left in the windows along the side; for the most part, like the doors, the frames are so rotten that any new glass set into them would fall back out and crack like the ones before. Around the back, a rusty metal balcony hangs precariously in front of a door on the second floor. While there are no stairs down from it to the ground floor, one could probably make a quick escape simply by stepping out onto it, so long as the escapee didn't care about the condition of their legs upon landing.

The inside is in even poorer shape. A wooden staircase lies in the middle of the floor, slowly disintegrating. Last remnants of faded, peeling paper clung to the walls in desperation, cowering from the slowly-creeping mold. In fact, it's the only thing still hanging on; cabinets and shelves and an erstwhile chandelier pepper the drooping floor. The entire sad affair smells like mothballs and mildew. Battery-powered camp lanterns, the sole light source, adorn a long folding table.

Sam recognizes nearly everyone milling about the room, all from the industry. Andy Gallagher and Ansem Weems, for instance, host the cult hit radio show _Nursery Fire_ , where bored housewives and altered college students call in to talk about urban legends, alien abductions, and psychic phenomena. Sarah Blake stands in front of a doorless closet; though she's currently the very picture of motherhood, swaying side to side with her infant daughter, rocking her to sleep, Ms. Blake is one of the preeminent painters of contemporary surrealist Gothic art. The Ghostfacers are here, of course, Spengler and Zeddmore occasionally glancing around the room, then returning to whisper together conspiratorially. The duo has had it in for the Winchesters at every convention for the past seven years, ever since Dean punked them at Contopia. Cas is huddled in a corner, still talking animatedly with the red-headed, wavy-haired mystery woman he walked off with earlier.

Rounding out the bunch and sitting at the head of the table is Chuck Shurley. Most days, he's a nostalgia critic, reviewing the worst sci-fi and horror films for a ravenous audience on his blog, _The B-Movie Prophet._ This weekend, he's the acting convention potentate and, as evidenced by his red jumpsuit, resident MST3K cosplayer. Chuck looks tired, hungover, and half-starved, but none of this is uncharacteristic. The man is a raging ball of nerves on a good day, but he seems especially distressed this evening, shuffling through folders with an air of obvious bewilderment.

Becky gathers them all around the table. Sam seats himself with Cas and his friend; Dean has chosen to lean against what's left of the banister behind them, enthusiastically folding a large piece of paper he's snatched off the table. He displays all of the outward signs of a bored man with a plan, Sam thinks. If only his own ennui was so obvious.

“First off,” he begins, “I'd like to thank you all for actually showing up. It's our third year, and our first year here, and my first year running solo, so having such a strong guest list is... Is...”

“Super!” Becky provides from the opposite end of the table.

“Yes, that,” agrees Chuck with a sigh. “Unfortunately, this is going to be all of us.” Becky startles, confused.

“Wait, what happened to everyone else? What about Gordon Walker?”

“Oh God, he sounded awful when he called me yesterday to back out,” Chuck says, grimacing. “Like he was trying to talk around a throatful of barbed wire.”

“Aaron Bass? He's not due until Saturday with his special effects workshop, but--”

“Nope, that's been canceled. There's apparently some wicked traffic coming out of Pennsylvania.”

“Garth Fitzgerald and...” Becky does a double-take at her clipboard. “A Mr. Fizzles?”

“Garth's in the hospital. Said he was bitten in his puppet arm by a crazy dog.”

“But what about the Mr. Fizzles?”

“On Garth's arm at the time.”

“O-o-o-kay. How about--” Chuck closes his eyes and sighs with his entire body before continuing.

“Daniel Elkins is also in the hospital, only with staph. Martin Creaser is back in rehab for--”

“Bath salts?” Sarah asks, her sleeping daughter's face tucked into her neck.

“Nailed it. Josie Barnes is having some kind of psychotic break. Fred Jones said he'd rather watch his own cartoons and hung up on me. Ellen Harvelle told me I had more important things to worry about than a damn convention, whatever the hell _that_ means. And everyone else is sitting in this room.”

“Wait,” interjects Dean, folding forgotten. “Wasn't Ellen--”

“Catering,” Chuck finishes. “Yes, she was, so we're also foodless for the weekend, except for a trunk full of bottled water, two boxes of Pops, and a handle of Jack, unless one of you happens to be Jesus and can magic up some loaves and fish.”

“Son of a bitch,” mutters Dean.

“Agreed.” Chuck sets down his stack of papers, and scratches absentmindedly at the patch on the breast of his jumpsuit. “Anyway, we're down six guests, nine panels, an interactive workshop, a puppetry demonstration, and the ability to feed anyone attending.”

“So,” Becky starts, her eyes narrowing, “What you're saying is we're screwed.”

“Oh, royally. Completely. Lubelessly, even.”

As the other guests loudly lament the situation to a thoroughly-finished Chuck, Dean returns to folding. The committee is in the middle of divvying up the now-empty panel slots (Sam will, to his unbridled joy, apparently be stuck with Becky in a discussion concerning homoerotic themes in modern horror) when he finishes. With a flourish, he deposits his creation onto the head of Castiel Novak.

“What,” Cas asks, ignoring the rest of the group, but not deigning to turn and look Dean in the eyes, “have you put on my head?”

“It's a condom.”

“This is an origami bicorn,” he corrects, pulling it out of his messy hair.

“Yeah, but it's on your head, so now it's a jimmy hat.”

Cas frowns.

“Get it? Jimmy hat?”

Cas blinks.

“Y'know, a condom? It's a hat on your head, which makes it yours, which makes it a―” Dean pauses, noticing the group's silence for the first time. “Aw, fuck it, Jimmy, you're no fun, at all.”

“No, you simply aren't funny.”

“What?” Dean acts genuinely offended. “I'm hilarious.”

“No, Winchester,” Cas says, turning around in his chair at last. “You are not, never have been, and likely never will be. To be witty means to have wit, after all,” he asserts, a challenge in his blue eyes, “and you certainly have none of that about you.”

There's a general groan of, “Here we go again,” from those gathered.

“Can we move this to a zone outside of the Novachester blast radius?” requests Spengler, dipping his head to sneer at the other side of the table. Chuck seconds the motion, and the group chooses to reconvene elsewhere.

“Is that actually a thing?” Dean wonders aloud as he stands ostracized with his brother in the yard, hands in his coat pockets, throwing the question Sam's way with raised eyebrows. Sam shrugs and perches himself on an ancient fire hydrant. He looks up through the branches of the shade tree that shelters it, watching the last wisps of white cloud as they melt into the deep purple of twilight. The leaves are green, for now, but soon they, like Ardmore, will shrivel up and die.

“So you're the infamous Dean Winchester,” interjects the red-head beside Cas as they exit Brick Hall. She is impeccably dressed in a chocolate brown pantsuit, the coat currently tossed over one shoulder due to the heat. Slung over the other shoulder is a messenger bag proclaiming itself to be a, “bag of holding,” though the label is nearly obscured by the sheer number of pins and patches that adorn it. The first few buttons of her collared white shirt are open, revealing a screen-printed _Dawn of the Dead_ tee.

“One and only, ma'am,” Dean replies with a tip of his head. He points to the identification badge tucked into her waistband. “And you make a great Agent Bradbury.”

“Oh!” She stops in her tracks, looking a bit skittish. “Uh, thanks?”

“Seriously, the bag is _perfect_. The whole costume is, really. Spitting image, like you just waltzed right out of one of Dad's comics.” Dean shakes his head with a smile, remembering better days of sitting on his father's lap as he inked. “She was his favorite female character to write, you know.”

“Well, that was patently obvious,” Cas scoffs. The smile slips from Dean's face as he slumps slightly over to one side

“You again?”

“So it would seem.”

“And why, exactly, is it so obvious, _Jimmy_?” Dean overemphasizes his name, drawing it out from two to three syllables.

“Easy,” counters Cas. “She's the only one who lives.”

“A tradition of fridging,” says the cosplayer, eying both Winchesters, “that you and your brother have only been too happy to carry on, I might add.” Sam, who has spent the entirety of the conversation thus far lost in celestial meditation, jumps back in the minute he hears the dreaded f-word.

“Hey, I just write what Dean draws!” he says, throwing his palms out in front of himself defensively. “Only the messenger.”

“There's nothing wrong with what I draw, and there's definitely nothing wrong with _Supernatural_. It's been going strong since the eighties for a reason.” There's a hint of legitimate pride in Dean's voice, but the woman still has the audacity to laugh.

“Sure, sure, there's nothing wrong with _Supernatural_ , except that the women in your comics either, a., die in the service of the great god Plot Device or, b., are too busy throwing themselves at the protagonists to warrant storylines of their own.”

“Dude, I just draw what I draw!”

“Ah, so you do admit to being a misogynistic man whore!” She says it with an enormous, genuine grin, and somehow not a hint of malice, but Dean can see Cas beside her. He's enjoying the show entirely too much.

“Bitch, do I know you?”

“I'm Charlie Bradbury,” she says with a needless but friendly wave.

“Yeah, that's your character,” Dean snaps back. “We covered that already.”

“It's also my _actual name_ ,” Charlie explains, a bit miffed. “My parents were really big fans of your father's work.”

“Then what the hell is your problem?”

Cas' smile is all venom and teeth as he says, “Just because they were this lovely woman's parents doesn't mean they, themselves, had taste.” Dean casts him a warning look, but largely ignores the jibe.

“You're one of those giant, militant, feminist lesbians, aren't you?” asks Dean wearily, rubbing a hand over his eyes and down his face. Charlie looks down at herself, then back up at Dean with a skeptic's stare.

“Do I look like a giant to you?”

“No!” Dean finally shouts, irritated. “No! You look like a―oh, Jesus _wept_.” Charlie follows to where Dean's eyes have landed―on her sidearm, which is most certainly not that of Agent Bradbury in the comic. “Is that a DL-44 heavy blaster pistol?” he asks, awestruck.

“No, that is _the_ DL-44 heavy blaster pistol,” she says with a knowing smile. Dean is practically drooling.

“Forget everything I almost said. You're perfect, and I fucking love you.”

Her grin grows goofy as she chirps back, “I know.”

“Excuse me, Miss Bradbury,” Cas begins, clearing his throat, “but I do need to prepare for the panel in the morning. Perhaps we could continue our discussion afterward?”

“Ohmygosh, of course!” Charlie beams. “You are more than welcome to listen to me babble about Herbert's thematic use of Islamic concepts anytime. I'd be flattered―no, _honored_ , Mr. Novak.”

He looks directly at Dean and replies, “Please, call me Castiel.” It produces, of course, the desired response―a livid elder Winchester.

“Wait a fucking minute! You've known her all of, what? Maybe three hours?” Cas nods. “I've known you six years and you still won't let me call you by your name! What gives?”

“You've never spent an afternoon discussing _The Eyes of Heisenberg_ with me.” Dean scrunches his nose in confusion.

“You two talked about blimps?”

“No, you imbecile.” Cas shakes his head. “You're thinking of the Hindenberg, which was a German zeppelin.”

“A Led Zeppelin?” The joke goes over about as well, much to Dean's chagrin.

“Don't bother, Cas.” Sam claps Cas on the back. “That heathen's never even finished _Dune_.”

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean barks out. “Maybe you could throw me under the bus again? I think there's still some blank skin free of treadmarks.”

“Don't worry; you'll no doubt fill it up quickly enough with more of your intensely-disturbing art,” Sam tosses back carelessly. “I mean, seriously, Dean, Charlie's right. _Supernatural_ is shit. You know I write this stifling tripe because it not only pays the bills, but keeps you out of trouble.” Sam turns to Cas and adds, “Have you _seen_ some of the nightmares that come tumbling out of his inkwell? I wonder sometimes if, instead of dropping out, the guidance counselors threatened to quit if he didn't.”

Dean is the picture of a man betrayed. Even Charlie has the decency to look shocked. Cas, strangely enough, remains expressionless, though he seems that way all the time to the casual onlooker. There's no practiced retort delivered, no pun given, no obscure reference alluded to. Dean swallows once, bites his lip, nods, then stalks off in the direction of the old farmhouse on the outskirts of town.

For the first time, Sam wonders if he's pushed a jest too far as Cas rounds on him. His eyes are all cold fire and steel; his nostrils flare; a hint of a snarl plays at the corner of his mouth. Cas clenches and unclenches his fists without rhythm.

“That,” he finally says, “was uncalled for.”

“I was just playing around,” Sam mumbles, both confused and ashamed. “Didn't think he'd take it so hard―I mean,” he starts, turning to Charlie to plead his case, “Dean bounces back from these sparring matches all the time, right? They never faze him for long.”

Charlie gives him a tense look. “Sam, you--” She leans in to whisper the rest in a hiss. “You just outed him from the _Dune_ closet! Not all of us choose to undertake the Gom Jabbar, but this is a convention. Here, you just swallow the Spice talk and move on, nobody the wiser, because Herbert is _the_ litmus test for well-read nerddom. No one admits they haven't read _Dune_.”

“Forget _Dune_ , Miss Bradbury. Sam's injury was far more grievous.”

“But, Cas, what did I--”

“ _You insulted his art_ , Sam!” Castiel snaps. “His soul put to paper, and you crumpled it, tossed it like it was trash! Some of us, Sam,” he says, an unearthly tone to his voice, “care very deeply about our work. We nurture it, feed it with our own life. What you've done is tantamount to killing his firstborn child.”

“Whoa! Whoa, Cas, it's―it's not like that. And besides, you do it all the ti--”

“ _It's different when I do it!_ ” Castiel's bellow scares a few straggling birds from their roost above. He seems as shocked and confused by his outburst as his company. “My... My apologies.” Cas scans the ground, as if it holds the answer to some crucial puzzle. “I think it would be prudent for me to turn in.” He bids them goodnight, and begins the trip back to Tent City.

“Wow,” Charlie says after the stretch of an awkward eternity. “You three need to mellow out. Throw that much angst around, and someone's eventually gonna put out an eye. Especially Kirk and Spock.”

“Does that make me McCoy?”

“Obvs.”

“I really wasn't trying to be a jerk,” Sam blurts out. “I wasn't, but it's been a long day, and--”

“No, Sam, it's okay!” Charlie pulls him in for the most sincere hug Sam's received in months. “They're in, like, a constant state of Pon Farr. That would wear down anyone's defenses.”

“Oh my God, I _know_.”

“Is there a story there? Have they actually done the Naked Now, or does that remain in the realm of a thousand fangirls' collective wet dream?”

“Your guess is literally as good as mine, but fuck, I wish I knew.”

Another, albeit shorter, cone of silence envelops them before Sam pipes up with a guarded, “I, uh. I mellow out.”

Charlie's eyebrows disappear under her bangs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, but not Kirk anymore.”

“Any reason?”

“Tainted joint,” replies Sam with a grimace.

“Aw, that sucks,” cringes Charlie. “That happened to me at Comic-Con. Got cross-faded and wound up with an unfortunate tattoo.”

Another beat, and then, “Spock does, too.”

“Is that supposed to surprise me?” She playfully pokes Sam in the chest. “Haven't you read the _Garrison_ series? He might as well have written out, 'I'm a stoner,' in the sky with diamonds.”

“Good point.”

The beat goes on as they start to walk down the lane. Stars are beginning to pop out, brilliant in a sky unpolluted by streetlamps. It's silent―not even a cricket to interrupt―but not uncomfortable. Sam feels like he's already known Charlie for years; he recognizes a kindred spirit when he sees one.

“So, uh, are you--”

“Am I holding?” supplies Charlie, with a giggle. “Duh, of course. I might be running three panels, but I fucking _hate_ conventions.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Dude, Sam, did you not see zombie Sailor Moon?”

“No,” Sam sighs, long-suffering. “No, I didn't.”

“Tragic! Huge tracts of land―Waitaminit, _waitaminit_!” Charlie suddenly stops, grabs Sam's arm, and yanks him around so she can look at his clothes. “Bright Hawaiian shirt, protruding chest wound, pocketful of plastic dinosaurs―Are you zombie!Wash, you magnificent bastard?”

“Finally,” Sam groans with relief. “You're the first person today to notice what I'm wearing.”

***

As long as he can remember, Dean Winchester wanted to be an artist. He closes his eyes and suddenly, Dean's back in his mother Mary's kitchen, sitting in the floor beside her legs, apron strings brushing his face when she shifts her weight from foot to foot as she stirs homemade sauce on the stove top. The rough finish of the 2-ply Bristol paper his father, John, prefers to draw on slides between his tiny, sweaty fingers. A box of eight chunky crayons lies on its side, contents spilled, broken, and ready to use, but Dean sits there perfectly content with the paper alone, with feeling it and folding it.

“You can tell a paper's worth its weight by touch alone,” John says in his head. The scene shifts, and he's on John's knees in front of his drafting table. He teaches Dean how the thin, expensive sheets of vellum he uses to trace cling and caress. John buys him a single piece of Bristol “plate”, though he grumbles about how the smoothness lends itself to smearing. With a tiny pair of safety scissors, Dean learns to cut straight lines by following those his father's drawn, learning first-hand how to select and snip the good panels from the bad and how to paste them on a dummy page.

He knows his father explained bits of the plot as they worked together, but the written word has never held a great appeal to Dean. When he does pick up a book, he only chooses the stories that willingly spring from the pages and paint themselves into his mind. It's why he prefers the road adventures of American beatniks and turn-of-the-century wordsmiths―recreating it afterward is as easy as breathing, and more relaxing than a day of fishing.

Sam has teased Dean mercilessly for years about never reading books without pictures, but, in a way, he's not incorrect. John Winchester was much the same. Everything Dean is inside, everything that matters―the good, the bad, the gray he refuses to see―he learned from John.

Sometimes he wonders why John never taught him how to storyboard his life, but Dean knows the answer. John drew and wrote and inked and colored the pages that would become _Supernatural_ ; the story, however, always belonged to Mary, though she chose to keep her own name off the cover. “This,” she'd say often, holding her boys tightly, “ _this_ is my story.”

The night John lost her to an electrical fire was the night the tale of Dean's childhood ended. She lived on in each issue that finally made it to press, simply by virtue of being the muse; first John's, then Dean's, once John--

Once he--

It doesn't matter. After all, when Dean is said and done, there will be no one left to inspire. The Winchester legacy will perish, as surely as his family did on a cold November night; John may have survived, but the man his father was never walked back out of that house.

Dean tries not to think about the past often, but when little Sammy, all thirteen pounds of him, squirming and crying in his arms, looks him in the face and tells him his dreams are worthless, that the family business is outdated and out-of-touch, it's all that comes to mind.

But he's not in the kitchen, or in his father's study, or watching the flames lick up the inside of his bedroom door. He's here, which is currently a ramshackle barn in nowhere, South Dakota, pulling a blue tarp off of the only other home a broken-hearted man was ever able to provide for his young children. When Mary was gone, this was the woman who rocked him to sleep. This is his mother, his lady, his love, all rolled into one.

Dean calls her Baby, but the well-maintained '67 Impala is so much more.

He runs his hands down her sides, whispers endearments. Promises to get her out of her hiding spot on the old farm as soon as he can. Reminds her how lucky she is not to be out in general parking, where anyone could touch her like this. Tells her how thankful he is for her constant presence in his inconstant life. When he reaches the trunk and slides the key home, he remembers the summer he spent making it his clubhouse. The inside of the lid still bears the white paint from where Dean had marked a cryptic symbol, discovered in an old book about monsters and myths.

Dean lifts up the false bottom of the trunk, and there they are, his only weapons against the darkness of his own mind.

He picks out a pad of 2-ply Bristol paper and a Tupperware full of red Copic markers, all various shades and sizes. Dean hesitates, then snags his glasses case, as well. There's no need to break into his emergency rations; there's a bottle of scotch and a cigar waiting for him back at his tent. Dean closes and locks the trunk, tucks Baby back in for the night, and chooses to take the long way back to bed, where he'll smoke and sketch and sip until, at long last, he'll lose the battle to stay conscious.

Dean never surrenders without a fight.

Just like John.

***

The moon watches over Ardmore, as it has for well over a century. It's light shines down into the rusted out Streamline trailer, parked on Fall River Avenue for the last six decades; inside, two new friends giggle and puff and pass long into the wee hours of the morning. It follows the trail of a lonely man who has long walked a path not his own; it spies on the sleeping form of another, notes spread over his body like a blanket, armored with his own words. It gently seeps into the poles of every tent and the bones of every life that sleeps in the fields tonight. It cradles the town in a bright embrace, encircles it with night-cool arms.

The moon watches over Ardmore, and it sees the glow of unfamiliar yellow eyes in the tall, tall grass, even though no one else does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In apology for the month-long wait between chapters, I present you with nearly thirteen thousand new words. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
> 
> Thank you, as always, to my fabulous friend and beta, [betty days](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/). Any remaining mistakes, oddities, and random tense shifts are my own.
> 
> Please do not repost/copy/duplicate this work to other sites. That's called theft.
> 
> ETA: I meant to thank all of you lovely readers for your fantastic comments. Your support and raving enthusiasm mean the world to me. <3

Castiel Novak is and has always been a man of strict routine. Regardless of where he has been, for the past fifteen years, he has prepared for the day in exactly the same fashion. Time could easily be told from his schedule alone; for example, if Cas is blinking blearily with a muttered curse, piles of loose-leaf tumbling from across his limbs as he sweeps his blanket back over his head, then it must be half-past-four. At five till, when his battery-operated Big Ben hammers its bells and shrills in protest, Cas will demonstrate his distaste with alarms by throwing it across the room. At five after, when the back-up alarm cheerfully beeps, he'll finally roll himself out of bed.

Since he makes sure to go to sleep in his shorts and running shoes every night, he never has an excuse not to go when morning rolls around. At five-oh-five, dinner is a memory and breakfast is a far-off dream, but the only food Cas' body craves is the dew-heavy air of early morning; the only comfort it needs is the steady vibration that hums through his legs with every dull thud of his feet on the ground. “Caffeine,” he's been quoted, “is for the weak; conditioning and control are all a person really requires.” His fans all assume Cas is talking about exercise and eating well, and he is, to a certain extent. But Cas never elaborates, because no one ever asks him to. He's perfectly happy to let his self-titled “flock” all think that he dropped out of seminary to write his books.

Castiel could have written and published the _Garrison_ series regardless of his profession. He had joined the priesthood due to lack of control over his own life, but he quit the priesthood due to lack of control over the lives of others. Cas had been happy, at first, knowing that the people in his diocese looked to him for guidance, for leadership. The knowledge that he was their intercessor with an unseen Father, that he was the gateway to the divine? It was heady.

Intoxicating.

_Addicting._

The delusion came crashing down around him during an otherwise normal Sunday Mass. He had watched a woman scroll through her cell phone with a dull look on her face throughout the entirety of the service. Where before Castiel had felt powerful in front of a congregation, he suddenly felt revolted. He'd never considered that a confessor might not perform the acts of contrition given to them; might not bother to read the rosary, cherishing each bead; might not deign to truly submit to a merciful, forgiving God. He could never really know if they followed his instructions; he could never guarantee that he had left them forever changed.

He couldn't save them, not really.

Castiel had been given a moment of revelation, and realized that he could do better.

This was all so... _Beneath him._

Now, however, he had the power he'd craved as a priest. Fans of his _Garrison_ novels told him about how his words and ideas had significantly altered the way they thought about the world. People actually did the things he told them to-for example, when Cas had asked them not to distribute his books online for free, every torrent had been removed within hours. Cas heard, on a frequent basis, that he inspired others to make the world a better place, one less like the dystopia of his universe.

Fandom, he had found, was purer than any religion. Its practitioners were fervent and faithful, loud-spoken and passionate. They'd crafted their own worlds and used their own words to explore his creation. Castiel's stories had wormed their way into their minds, taken root, and bloomed into a steadily-growing cult that called him “Commander” of all things.

He was no longer the intercessor. He _was_ a god, and he was _worthy_ , and it was _good_.

At five-oh-seven on Friday morning, however, Cas isn't considering his deification, because it isn't time for that yet. (He finds it more of a smoking topic, if he's being honest, which he is.) His morning run is a time for meditation. This is when he clears his head and prepares for the day. This is when he pops in his ear buds, clips a cheap iPod knock-off to the sleeve of his t-shirt, and runs his way through Muse's concert at Wembley Stadium. This is not when he reflects on his life or the people in it.

“Knights of Cydonia” has only been on for thirty seconds before Cas' traitorous, half-woken brain repeats the question of the night before, thoroughly disturbing his calm: Why had he lost control of himself and yelled at Sam?

He still can't figure it out, because Castiel Novak _hates_ Dean Winchester. Every iota of his machismo-infected, Neanderthal, pig-headed body is anathema. This is war; he should be supporting the attack, not defending the target. Dean Winchester is, has, and always will be the enemy.

Cas does, however, enjoy Sam's company. Poor Sam, so starved for someone to see him as himself and not as Dean's brother or, worse still, a Winchester legacy. It's so easy to get Sam to open up and share about Dean because he lives, inexplicably, in his shadow. So Cas manipulates Sam, too, just as he manipulates them all.

It's not that Cas doesn't like his friends and his fans; he simply sees them as unique diversions, as specimens to study. Insightful, adoring, and oft-amusing, but ultimately subordinate to himself. He listens to all of their achievements, all of their woes, all of their tales—particularly Sam's, as Cas finds them the most interesting—and he shows appropriate emotion; he understands them and forgives them, like any just god would. Cas is more than capable of loving them all equally, if only because he doesn't really love anyone, at all.

But the look on Dean's face last night when Sam dismissed his art is haunting Cas. He remembers the first time he saw hopeless resignation flash in Dean's eyes. That night six years ago is starting to make at least a little more sense. Cas had always surmised that the man known as Dean was more fake and contrived than a _Commando Cody_ plot line, merely an adopted persona, but now he wond—

No.

_No._

He has never felt sorry for that Winchester, and he certainly isn't about to start. Castiel doesn't care about other people; he cares about what they represent-that he deserves respect and has earned the control he exercises over them. Trying to control Dean Winchester is like taming the wind, Cas has discovered, though the degree of difficulty in the attempt has always been rather... _Gratifying._ He originally wore the same outfit and stayed away from pop culture and spoke oddly and frankly because it endeared him to his flock, but now he continues to do so because it provokes Dean. Nevertheless, as much as Cas relishes their encounters, he does not care about him. In the end, no matter how intriguing or infuriating, he's just as mere a mortal as the rest.

There's no need to figure out who Winchester really is, Castiel decides, because it simply isn't important to the game they've been playing. He hates Dean, and Dean hates him, and there's nothing more to it. Ultimately, Dean will lose, because the board has always been tilted in Cas' favor. He would have lost already if Cas didn't enjoy drawing it out, watching Dean twitch, savoring his own inevitable victory. Why consider the matter any further and ruin all the fun? How else can Cas win, when such a fool as Winchester thinks he can be a king?

“Don't waste your time,” he continues to mouth along with the song, grass slapping and stinging the backs of his legs as he runs through it, “or time will waste you.” Thoughts of Dean and the night before—and, perhaps, a night long before that—are banished. By five-twelve, fully awake, he lets the rhythm of the drums coincide with the rhythm of his feet.

All that is required in life is conditioning and control, and Cas is a master of both.

***

Sam doesn't wake up Friday morning because he never went to sleep. He and Charlie had inadvertently channeled their inner _Trailer Park Boys_ all night, the air in the Streamline still hazy from their reverie. One joint had turned into...

Into...

He gets distracted by the weight of his own tongue in his dry mouth, acutely aware of the path his breath takes through his nose and down his throat and into his chest and _dammit he is thirsty_ but not enough to do anything about it because he's floating, floating, nothing more than collected molecules in suspension—

“Shit, Sam.” Charlie lies sprawled out on a red sleeping bag as she has been all night, stargazing through a large hole in the roof of the trailer. “Come back down, Bert; Mary Poppins wants to talk to you.”

“Fuck. Did I say that out loud?”

“You said that out loud.”

_“Fuck.”_

They float for awhile.

Sam wonders where Charlie's stars have gone.

He knows where his own wandered off to.

“What?”

“What-what?”

“Your stars,” Charlie elaborates, sitting up. She reaches for the edge of Sam's own sleeping bag, a giant blue monstrosity that is surely too small for him. Charlie tries to pull him over to her side of the trailer; she manages to drag herself over, instead. She shrugs, and folds her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and tucking her feet beneath her. “What's gotten into you?”

“I tend to get a little introspective when I smoke.” Sam lies back and closes his eyes, folding his hands over his stomach. “And I'm always rambly, sober or not. Didn't mean to be a buzzkill. Just...” Sam waves his hand in the air, fishing for words. “Lost in the past, I guess. You remind me of someone I used to know.”

Charlie smiles. “Good someone?”

“She was going to be my wife.” Sam scratches his head; he runs his fingers through his hair and imagines that it's hers. “Jess. She was the best someone to ever be.”

Charlie nods and pats his knee in solidarity. It's enough for Sam; he doesn't like to make much fuss about his life pre-convention, mostly because it seems to belong to someone else. Another Sam.

He hasn't been that Sam in a long, long time.

“You want to talk about her?”

He nearly gives in. Sam almost tells her about Jess' smile and the way her eyes lit up with it. He almost tells her about how much she genuinely loved people, how she volunteered at a free clinic through her nursing program. He almost tells her that Jess had called him one evening on the way home from her shift, late for dinner and stuck in traffic. “I have the best news!” she'd said.

Sam almost tells her about the screech of horns and the gunshot of the airbag and the whine metal makes when it twists two cars together. He almost tells her about wishing that he hadn't insisted on seeing her body in the emergency room, mangled and bloody and gone. He almost tells her about searching through Jess' purse after the funeral, and finding the positive test.

He almost tells her about the last time he told Jess he loved her, standing in front of her headstone before he'd left with Dean, running away from his grief.

He almost does.

But he doesn't.

“No,” Sam says instead. “I'll be okay.”

All the stars are gone. Sam floats again. Eventually, his watch alerts him to the time, beeping incessantly, annoyingly.

“Five-thirty.” He sighs, then adds, “T-minus four-and-a-half hours to panel-side.”

“Excellent!” Charlie unfolds herself and rubs her hands together, a smirk on her face. She then produces a slim cigarette case in her bag with a conspiratorial look. “Just enough time to wake, bake, and digest before the fireworks start.”

Sam has a negative number of objections.

“Even better,” she continues, “We're going to go get Cas first.”

“Why? I mean,” explains Sam, “I love to smoke with Cas, don't get me wrong, but he's smack in the middle of jogging through Wembley right now, and he doesn't break his routine for anything.”

“Oh, he will for this.” Charlie opens the case and runs it under his nose. His eyes go wide and he can't stop inhaling the scent. _Blueberry._ “And he will talk, and we will know, and you,” she starts, pushing herself up to her feet, “you are going to feel better.”

“Alright.” Sam accepts her hand, standing with the creak and groan of limbs unused for hours. “But, I'm telling you, it would take an apocalypse to tear Cas away from his morning run.”

She rolls her eyes, tucks a joint behind his ear, pushes him out the door, and suddenly he's left with only the wind to hear his complaints. Sam would normally find it odd, the pervasive silence that has descended upon Ardmore like a plague. It is a convention, after all, a beast that never sleeps. Even this early in the morning, there should be some sign of life.

Sam, however, is a man on a mission, and all other thoughts are pushed aside as he catches up with Cas at the other end of Fall River Avenue. His presence is acknowledged with a nod, and Cas slows down to keep pace with Sam's walking stride. The legs of the baggy, neon orange shorts that Cas insists are the correct size cease their billowing.

“So get this,” he begins excitedly.

“I believe it is traditional to begin a conversation by saying 'hello' and then following up with an inquiry as to the greeted person's condition.”

Sam exhales heavily. “Hello, Cas.”

“Hello, Sam.”

“So get—“

“How are you?”

“Right now?” Sam stops, hands on his hips and bitch on his face. “Little bit frustrated.”

“Oh.” Castiel jogs in place. “You had a prepared statement?”

After mulling it over, Sam counters with, “More of a propositi—Where the hell is everyone?” He turns a few circles, pivoting on his heel, arms outstretched. “I mean, I usually get glomped at least three times before breakfast, and that's just Becky. This place is emptier than when we arrived.”

“All still abed, no doubt.” They restart their journey, walking side by side, Cas taking three steps for each of Sam's. “Please, continue.”

“Right.” Sam clears his throat, and looks around as if checking for a tail. “You remember Charlie?”

“Of course I do,” says Cas, suddenly smiling. “She is an excellent human.”

Sam nods as he moves in front of Cas, stopping him in his tracks. “Oh, she most certainly is,” he agrees, plucking the joint from beneath the make-shift canopy of his hair and brandishing it like a magic wand. He slides it beneath Cas' nose.

Cas inhales, and immediately jerks back. He looks between Sam and his offering several times before asking, “Is that—“

“Blueberry Kush?” Sam licks his lips and grins like he finally got that new bike for Christmas. “Why, yes, Yes, it is.”

“Praises,” mutters Cas, eyes wide and appreciative. “Where to?”

Sam can hardly believe how quickly Cas is distracted. But for as simple a task as that was, convincing him to talk about his intense hate for Dean is even easier. It's as if his subconscious has been focused on nothing else during his run. Cas complains about the loudness of his aftershave, laments his lack of culture, and lambasts his literary tastes.

They're in three hits each when Charlie finally prompts, “Sounds like you all have quite the history, Castiel. Wanna share what happened with the class?”

“I—I never said—“

“Just the Cliffs Notes!” Cas wrinkles his nose in distaste. She amends, “Maybe not Cliffs Notes, but you know, deets. Give them already!”

“But I—“ As he reaches to accept the joint from Sam, Charlie swoops in and grabs it.

“Ah ah ah!” Charlie smiles and wags her finger. “Peer pressure. You toked, you talk.”

“Samuel!” Cas exclaims, shocked and as upset as is possible in his relaxed state. “You set me up!”

“Eh,” Sam says cheekily, “Maybe a little.”

“We had a lot of free time last night,” explains Charlie. “I brought the goodies, so Sam brought me up-to-date.” She looks Cas directly in the eyes and asks, “Did you really fill Baby's trunk with bees at Game of Cons?”

“He put superglue in my overcoat during Venus Takes Vegas,” Cas scoffs. “I was permanently prepared for inclement weather the entire weekend.”

“And you _only_ filled his trunk with bees?”

“Well,” Cas concedes, “I suppose I could have put the hive in with them, but it seemed impractical.”

Sam, anxious to finally hear about the first fight, waves his hands between the two, trying to interrupt. “Look,” he begins, “Cas, this is all very fascinating—“

“Maybe if I kept skeps,” continues Cas. “But I am something of a DLD fanatic...”

“Focus, Cas!” Sam puts his hands on either side of Cas' face, like blinders on a racehorse. “A.D.D. Tunnel! _Stop! Stalling!”_

Castiel sighs. “Fine, fine, if you insist.” Charlie fist-pumps, then happily hands the joint back to Cas. He lights it, puffs twice, then begins: “It was 2008. Area 50Con...”

***

The third of three sons of a very religious, very traditional, very powerful family, Castiel had always known he was bound for priesthood whether he liked it or not. Luckily, it had suited him just fine. He had no desire to settle down or start a family someday, and he certainly wasn't inclined to take over the company, like Michael, the eldest. He was even less interested of a future of persistent rise through the military ranks, as had been the destiny of his brother Gabriel, God grant him peace.

Castiel, knowing it was never to be an option, had decided at an early age to simply never be interested in carnal knowledge. He didn't lust, because doing so held no purpose. Energy was best spent in other endeavors, such as writing in his journal or learning an old language. Self-improvement, self-advancement, _those_ were things that were important. Our time on the mortal plane is so short; why study such temporary flesh when one could divine the undying soul?

So he looked first to Heaven, and then to himself.

And then he looked at Dean Winchester, and for the first time, Cas _wanted_.

Castiel used the information he'd been given to slice Winchester to the core. In front of an audience, of course, as instructed. Making the deal to humiliate the eldest Winchester in exchange for the money he needed to publish the sequel to _Thursday's Garrison_ had actually disgusted him, but now that he was here, with Dean, he decided it had been the best decision he'd ever made.

Dean cowered, and Castiel _loved it._

Then, when Dean fought back, it was _even better._

And when he felt Dean's pulse jack-rabbit beneath his fingers, Castiel knew that both predator and prey were in firm agreement.

***

“WHOA! Hey, hi there, Dean's little brother here. Could you please _stop talking_?” Sam's eyes are scrunched together, and his hands form a protective layer over his ears.

Cas frowns. “I thought you wanted to hear the story.”

“I want to hear the story!” Charlie chimes in. “Besides, my green. Your queen demands it.”

“Well, yeah, I want to know,” starts Sam, unballing himself bit by bit. “But he can leave all of the sex out of it. I mean, can't you?” he asks, turning to Cas, who is dutifully picking dryer fuzz off of his charity run t-shirt. “It's just... Gratuitous. _Unnecessary_.”

“It's quite crucial to the setting,” Cas replies without looking up.

“The crucialest,” agrees Charlie.

Sam blinks once or twice. “Aren't you a lesbian?”

_“Have you seen these two?_ Do you understand the kind of hot, crazy sex they would—no, oh my God, the tin-hatters were right, probably _have_ had? The presence of penis, Sam,” Charlie continues, leaning in to school him, “is inconsequential in cases like this. Shit, I should be taking notes.”

“What for, Charlie, your invisible cock?”

“No, silly,” she smiles, “for my strap-on.”

Sam recoils and shouts, “ _I just met you!_ Are you this forthcoming with everyone?”

She leans back, gestures down her body, and simply says, “WYSIWYG, motherfucker.”

“Regardless,” Cas restarts, now very curious about a spot of paint on the wall, “Regardless, Sam, you know I can't spin a tale without—“

“—completely setting the scene,” finishes Sam. “Yes, _Clan of the Cave Bear_ , I get it.”

Castiel's smile is wide and bright. “I understood that reference.”

“Good for you.” Sam reaches for the joint to relight it, because there's no way he can be even microscopically _close_ to sober for what he's about to hear. “Now, c'mon, tell me more about yours and my brother's exploits than I ever wanted to know.”

***

He'd waited in front of the hotel elevator, because Cas knew Dean would follow, if for no other reason than that this was the only access upstairs from the convention. Though he wasn't exactly on script anymore, Cas had found he couldn't care. Besides, if anyone saw, it would still generate the publicity his backer wanted, perhaps to an even greater extent. Castiel might even be able to persuade his way into funding for not just a sequel, but a trilogy.

Sure enough, not three minutes later, there was Dean. Fuming, he strode over, jabbing his finger in Cas' chest. Cas pressed the call button undetected with his right hand. Dean opened his mouth, likely to yell accusations and obscenities, but Castiel silenced him with a condescending squint. After the ten seconds they stood frozen, staring at each other, the elevator finally dinged in arrival. Cas suddenly smirked and snatched Dean's right forearm with his left hand; simultaneously, his right had snuck behind Dean and grabbed the back of his neck as he stepped forward. He pulled Dean into his step, which knocked him off-balance long enough to allow Cas to flip him around, his arm pulled behind his back.

Castiel threw his other arm around Dean's neck and, as the doors open, marched him inside and against the back wall. He leaned in and quietly asked, “What did I say about touching me, Winchester?”

“Fucking hell,” Dean managed to croak out. “You are one strong son-of-a-bitch.” The grip on his arm tightened, Cas' fingers squeezing his skin.

" _What did I say?_ " Cas repeated.

Dean swallowed before answering. “You said not to bother.”

“Because?”

“Because I'd, heh, rub off on you.”

Cas tsked. “No, no, I don't believe that's precisely it.”

  
“I don't know—“

“Yes, you do.”

“...Oh _fuck_ no, I am not gonna say that.”

“I think you will,” Cas replied, chuckling lowly. He released the choke hold, and trailed his fingertips under Dean's jacket, down from his right shoulder to his stomach. They brushed across his shirt, a gentle tease back and forth on his belly. Dean pressed his forehead into the cold wall of the elevator, breathing audibly. “Unless, of course, you're about to tell me that you aren't interested in—how was it you put it? 'Rubbing off' on me?”

“You're a kinky bastard, Novak.”

“Says the man enjoying being held down and molested by a complete stranger in a public elevator.”

“ _Touché_.” Dean shifts, and Cas isn't sure whether he is trying to move away from or press into his touch. “But you can't make me—“

Dean managed to stifle a gasp when his left arm, which had been hanging limp by his side, apparently forgotten, joined his right, both wrists held tight in Cas' grip. Those damned fingers returned to his body, now under his t-shirt, nails lightly scraped across his chest.

“Oh, I can,” Cas vows, “and you will.”

  
***

  
“Nope,” Sam says, waving his hands in front of his face. “Nope, nope, nope. I was wrong. I don't want to know anymore.”

“I could stand to hear a little more.” Charlie's enthusiasm earns Sam's glare. “What? There's always room for Jayne.”

“We'd be done if you'd stop interrupting,” sighs Cas. “You reap what you sow, Sam.”

“That's right. Besides,” Charlie says, waggling her eyebrows, “if you really didn't want to hear, you wouldn't have asked.”  
Sam balances his elbows on his knees, legs crossed, and lets his face fall into his upturned hands. “Ugh, okay, fine, just... Just hurry up.”

“Alright.” Castiel pauses. He looks around at the ceiling, mumbling to himself, before asking, “Where was I?”

“You were about to make Dean come in his pants like a teenager.”

“ _Jesus_ , Charlie!” Sam glances up with a stricken look. “If you two are going to keep this up, then I request a reroll.” He begins patting his pockets in a vain quest for fire.

“Chill out, Smokestack.” Charlie leans forward and pokes around in the hubcap-turned-ashtray. “Here, look, this jay's still viable. Knock yourself out, you massive stoner.”

“Was it before or after I called him a slut?” Cas asks, unmoved by Sam's discomfort.

“Oh, totally before,” replies Charlie, tossing a lighter in Sam's direction. “But you hadn't yanked his head back and whispered filthy shit in his ear yet.”

“Shut up, shut up, _shut up_.” Sam forgets he's supposed to catch the lighter, and it buzzes past his hair, crashing into the bare wall of the Streamline with a metallic twang. “Dammit.”

“How did you know I did that?” Cas inquires.

Charlie shrugs. “It's what I would do if I was straight and had Dean Winchester completely at my mercy. Anyone can see that he is a damn attractive man.”

“That's it.” Sam gives up the hunt for the lighter, as it requires movement. “I'm convinced. I really am in Hell.”

“Screw you, Samwise.” Charlie grins as she prods Sam's knee with the toe of her shoe. “This is the greatest day of my life.”

***

It took two stops and a scandalized Stormtrooper before Dean gave in. “Because I...” He closed his eyes and took a shaky inhale, scarlet staining his cheeks. “Because I have... Issues.” Cas smiled into his neck, triumphant.

“Elaborate.”

Dean groaned and spat out, “Daddy issues! You said I have daddy issues, you crazy motherfucker, now _just touch me already_.”

“No,” Cas says decisively. His hand stops its meandering path across Dean's torso, fingers lacing tightly in short brown hair. He tugs, hard, and holds it, pulling Dean's head back. “No, I don't think you've earned it. And you do want to earn it, don't you?”

“ _Fuck_.”

“You're not _that_ greedy, are you, to want something you don't deserve?” Cas mouthed at his neck, and _why has he never done this before?_ “Ah, but, then again, you're nothing more than a common slut. So _easy_.” He paused for emphasis. “Daddy didn't love you enough, did he?”

“Shut up,” Dean hissed, jaw clenched, but neck bared.

“Of course he didn't. You'll spread your legs for anyone, anywhere, just to feel wanted, won't you? Even for a former man of God. You don't care, so long as someone makes you come.” Having garnered no response, Cas continued with a whisper. “You will tell me. I am both practiced and adept at coaxing confession, Winchester.”

Dean _whimpered_ , and so Cas pressed on.

  
“At least it isn't hard for you to whore yourself out, hmm? Not with a perfect little mouth like yours.” He relinquished his hold on Dean's hair, and reached around to pet his face. Dean leaned into the touch, eyes slightly glazed. “Such a lovely face for such a dirty boy. No one tells you that you're handsome, though, do they?”

“...No,” Dean quietly said.

“No, they tell you you're _pretty_.” Castiel considered his words and smirked. “And you are pretty. Pretty like a _girl_.” Dean froze, but Cas dismissed it as part of the game. “Pretty like your _mother_ —“

Dean's foot connected with the inside of his calf. Cas stumbled, back and to the side, losing his hold. Before he had time to react, Dean had pushed him backwards into the neat rows of buttons, and then introduced his fist to Cas' face. He came to an unknown amount of time later, slumped over onto the floor of the elevator, bloodied and broken-nosed and blearily blinking into the strobe flash of a camera.

The image had spread across the blogosphere like wildfire.

Castiel didn't care, because he had found himself funded through book seven.

He didn't care.

He _didn't_.

Castiel wasn't bothered when Dean had paled at their first debate panel together several months afterward. A fan had asked what he thought of Dean, and Cas responded with, “He's nothing special, merely a fresh-faced twit with no one at home who cares. Yet another example of what's wrong with the men in this industry—Winchester is a violent, self-absorbed prick.”

He'd expected more of that fire from before, but Dean hadn't said a word. He bit his lip, nodded, and looked away.

Cas had been distracted the rest of the panel, but he wasn't bothered by the man who now refused to meet his eyes. Of course he wasn't. Even if he had been, any compassion Castiel might have had dissipated up and out like a plume of pipeweed smoke when Dean called him an, “arrogant, egotistical fucking _maniac_ with a God complex to rival Gendo Ikari and a bigger mouth than a Sarlacc,” not five minutes later.

“Oh, by the way,” Dean had said, shoulder-checking him in the hallway that afternoon. “I'm glad you're okay, you enormous bag of dicks.”

Castiel had followers, but never followed, so when Dean walked away, he let him.

They never spoke again of the night in New Mexico.

***

“Wait, so you hate Dean why, exactly?” Charlie asks with a frown, tearing herself away from a serious investigation of her split ends. “Because he hit you, because he insulted you, because he left you hanging, or...?”

“No.” Cas is lying flat on his back, head on his arms, legs crossed at the ankle. “No, I hate him because he's a coward.”

Sam snaps to attention. “Don't you ever call my brother a fucking coward. You don't even _know_ him.”

“I know enough,” Cas scoffs with an exaggerated eye roll.

“No, you really don't.” Sam rises to his feet, having to duck slightly to avoid hitting his head on the trailer's ceiling. He dusts off his pants with the backs of his hands, and sighs when he sees that the lighter had been right behind him all along.

“He's right, Castiel,” agrees Charlie. “I mean, you did kind of assault the man in an elevator.” Cas opens his mouth to protest, but Charlie will not be interrupted. “I get that both of you were apparently pretty into it—really, I get that—but you weren't exactly being, you know, _safe_ about it.”

“I don't understand.”

“Oh my God, why me?” Sam wonders aloud to any listening pantheon. He turns himself in a circle of self-pity and slight foot-stamping before looking down at Cas. “All she's saying is that, if you're going to—ugh—manhandle my brother, then there are... Well, precautions that should be taken for... That sort of thing. To make sure everyone's, uh, okay. You know.”

“No, I don't, Sam.”

“Then ask somebody else!” he says, throwing his hands in the air. “Sam is out! Sam is done! Do not ask Sam.” He thinks for a minute. “Ask Dr. Google.”

“Or Becky,” Charlie suggests impishly.

“ _Do not_ , under any circumstances, _ask Becky_.” Sam crouches down and waves his hand in front of Cas' face. “She is not the adviser you're looking for.”

“Considering her copious knowledge on the subject of male-male sex,” begins Cas, “I don't see why you obje—“

“So you didn't always hate Dean?” Charlie interjects, trying to change the subject before Sam has an aneurism.

“I did,” Cas clarifies, “but, at first, only because I was paid to.”

“And thus began the hatemance,” says Charlie. “I can't believe it.”

Cas squints. “I do not lie, Miss Bradbury.”

“Oh, no, I don't doubt the story,' she elaborates. “I just can't believe I owe fifty bucks to the Ghostfacers. Also, _hnnng_.”

“'Hnnng'?” parrots Cas.

“Yeah. If that's how you virgins perform out of seminary, then I am strictly seducing nuns from now on.”

“No wonder Dean refused to tell me how he broke his hand,” Sam muses. “Not to mention why we suddenly went on hiatus. Or why he changed our entire convention rotation. But why does he have to call you by your pen name? I don't get it.”

“Ah, it's part of the game,” he says. “Dean prefers to earn things, like I told you. And he hasn't yet.”

“Does he know he's supposed to?” asks Charlie.

“He's never asked. I—' Castiel pauses to consider. “I assumed he was aware.”

“Holy shit, Cas,” Charlie leans forward. She pulls Cas up to sit, grabs his legs, and turns him to face her. “Are you still in scene?”

“I've never been in a theatrical production,” he responds, perplexed.

“Six fucking years!” Sam says, blowing up. “You've been foreplaying around me for six fucking years! And-and-and Dean doesn't even know! How is this my life? What did I do? Why do I deserve this?”

“Cas.” Charlie takes his hand and looks him in the eye, thoroughly ignoring Sam. “You need to talk with Dean.”

“We speak frequently.”

“But you never actually _talk_. You can't just play games with people's minds.”

“Yes, I can. I am perfectly capable.”

“Fine, Mr. Semantics, but you _shouldn't_ , at least not without asking first.”

“Oh,” Castiel says after mulling it over for a few seconds, then nodding. “I see. It's impolite to punish someone without informing them beforehand as to why they deserve it. Thank you, Miss Bradbury.” He smiles. “I understand now.”

“Um.”

“Though I hardly see why I should _con_ sult him before I _in_ sult him. That seems counterproductive. Why ever would a hunter alert his target?”

“Actually,” Sam backpedals, “maybe you _should_ talk to Becky.”

Cas opens his mouth to ask why Sam has changed his mind, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. Already cracked, Sam reaches over and pulls it open with one long arm.

The hinges give way at last, and the door clatters as it bangs against the wall, then falls off. On the doorstep, which is less a step and more a pile of broken cinder blocks, is Chuck. Wearing an old ratty bathrobe over Batman boxers and a convention tee, he has a white-knuckled death grip on his clipboard, and appears to be shaking in his slippers.

“Chuck,” Sam starts, narrowing his eyes, “why is there a molar in your hair?”

“We have to get out of here,” is all Chuck says.

***

Chuck Shurley has already had a very bad day. He was awoken around two, because the young couple in the tent next to his had been... _Busy_ all night. There was shouting and moaning and Chuck had been half convinced that he was going to be an unfortunate witness to a murder. Two more shots from his good friend Jack let him slip back to sleep, clutching his pillow to his chest, snuffling into it as he slept fitfully.

When he woke up again at four, however, Chuck was no longer alone. He rubbed his eyes and blinked several times at the person who stood in front of the door flap. It was a bearded, shaggy-haired man. Average weight, average height, average looks. At least, as far as Chuck could tell, looking into the pre-dawn shadows, bereft of both glasses and contacts. He tried to sit up, but realized too late that he was still zipped into his sleeping bag and tipped himself off of his cot. Chuck fumbled an arm out of the top of the bag, groped around for his glasses, and—

And why was his hand wet? He'd had fans invade his personal space before—that's how he lost his first typewriter, after all—but they'd at least had the decency to not let in the dew. Chuck's search had at least yielded a tap light, if not his second set of eyes. He hit it with a bag-covered elbow, and the light shifted down to lie flat on the ground with a crunch.

Oh. So that's where his glasses had been hiding. Dammit.

The anemic glow illuminated the tent enough to justify squinting at the intruder. Chuck's earlier assessment had been correct, but now he saw the costume. The man wore a white jumpsuit under a brown jacket covered in patches and insignia. He, like many of the other attendees, had obviously decided to zombify his character, although why he dyed his Karo syrup black instead of red, Chuck didn't know. Regardless, a thick, black ooze was dripping from the man's ears and nostrils. He'd made himself up with a sickly yellow-tinted concealer; a brighter yellow graced the contacts in his eyes; yellow, too, were the claw-like protrusions he wore over his fingers. What Chuck was truly curious about was the type of pump system the _Alien_ fan had installed to make the same awful-smelling black slime dribble out the legs of his pants.

“I mean, don't get me wrong, Dallas,” Chuck began, still trying to wrestle himself out of the sleeping bag. “Excellent costume. Great engineering, too, but did you have to leak all over the floor?” He wiped the goo off of his hand and onto yesterday's boxers.

The cosplayer swayed forward, releasing more of the strange substance into the congealing puddle at his feet, but said nothing.

“You think you could stop that? This is going to be a bitch to clean up.” Chuck kept wiping his hand, but the black spot refused to budge. “Actually, you think you could just _leave_?”

Dallas made a choked, garbled sound, and fell to his knees. His mouth popped open, and the ooze flowed freely out of it.

“Oh shit, seriously?” said Chuck as the zipper pull broke off in his hand. “This, and now you? That's just unnecessary. Go bite through your gelatin capsules outside before I—“ Chuck paused and searched the tent with his eyes for something with which to deliver himself from the sleeping bag. “Hey, do you see a shaving kit over there, or at least my straight razor? I know I brought—“

“Hal muh,” replied Dallas. The black oil leaked from the corners of his eyes and dripped sideways down his face.

“How... How are you doing that? With-with-with the eyes?” Chuck continued to look around the tent; he suddenly wanted the razor for an entirely different reason. “I don't know what you took, but I highly suggest you never take it again.” As he fought harder to extricate himself from his bedding, he continued, “Or maybe you have the plague? In which case, how dare you show up to my convention! I mean, what if you're contagious—oh God, are you contagious? Please don't be contagious.”

The visitor spewed, dark and bubbly and steaming, and more clearly repeated, “Help me,” before crumbling to the floor in a heap. The tarry substance stopped flowing; instead, the man began to bleed, scarlet and sticky and sluggish. His eyes remained open, wide and unfocused, not bothered by the ferrous flow dripping from beneath their lids. His clawed hands twitched in on themselves, and flexed one last time as his chest rose, fell, then rose no more.

Chuck stopped wrangling his nylon cage. Instead, he sat up and scooted himself closer to the man, inch by inch, slowed by the friction of the bag against the bottom of the tent. Carefully, he extended a leg, and poked the still cosplayer with a covered toe.

“Hey,” Chuck said, prodding harder, “Hey, buddy, c'mon, get up.” After several minutes of no change, he began to kick. “You can't die at my convention! It hasn't even started! Move, damn you!”

And then, Dallas did.

He jerked up from the floor, head bent at an unnatural angle over his shoulder. His arms rotated, elbows out in front, bones cracking and creaking and piercing through skin. A distinct pop alerted Chuck to the man's knees breaking backwards; the force of the movement bent him forward, torso nearly perpendicular to the ground. His head twisted around, and, with a rapidly-elongating neck, leered at Chuck with solid yellow eyes, pupils gone. His nose and mouth contorted and continued to sink into a likewise misshapen, mutating face. Dallas—but no, this wasn't Dallas any longer—the _monster_ opened its mouth in a silent scream as the skull crumpled within its head. Brain matter streamed from all orifices as the head collapsed in on itself before exploding.

Chuck promptly pissed himself and passed out.

When he next woke two-and-a-half hours later, the only signs of anything having occurred were a tooth tangled in his hair, a pair of underwear stained by black hand prints, a sleeping bag torn in panic, and the lingering smell of urine.

***

“Please, please, _please_ tell me you changed clothes before coming over,” Charlie begs. “I mean... Just... Ew. Over share alert.”

“That's your takeaway?” Chuck shouts. “Really? That I peed myself? Not that a man _exploded all over me_?!”

“There's nothing on you,” explains Sam, incredulous. “I mean, seriously. I can't believe you expected us to buy that load of crap.”

“You've reviewed films with better plots than that, and you're a Roger Corman apologist,” Charlie elaborates.

“But he did, so you should,” insists Chuck. He looks Charlie square in the face before pointing and saying, “And don't you drag Corman into this. That man is a living legend.”

“One word: _Sharktopus_.”

“Two words: _Teenage Caveman_ ,” Sam chimes in.

“Oh, oh, five words: _Night of the Blood Beast_ ,” Charlie says excitedly. “They even used the same monster suit as in _Caveman_.”

“Seriously?”

Charlie holds up three fingers and vows, “Scout's honor.”

“You cannot blame a man for making a decision of economy in support of his art!” Chuck argues. “They were filmed in the same place around the same time; choices were made, for better or wor—why are we talking about this? We have to go before we get eaten, or exploded, or oozed and mutated into turtles or—!”

Sam huffs and rolls his eyes. “Can it, Shurley. I mean, come on, you actually expected us to take your zombie story at face value at a zombie-themed convention?”

“Yes!”

“Exploding cosplayers that disappear. We're supposed to just believe that?”

“YES!” Chuck stomps his fuzzy feet and pulls his short uncombed hair in frustration.

Charlie gives him a wary look as she asks, “You do know you're too old to drop, right?”

“Oh, no,” follows Sam, suddenly sympathetic. “You didn't buy off a guy named Don, did you?”

“I wasn't tripping,” insists Chuck, “and I haven't smoked in months.”

“Maybe you just dreamed it?”

Chuck laughs, the cadence slightly maniacal. “Yeah, Charlie, sure. Guess I just dreamt this tooth right into my hair!” He grabs her by both shoulders and frantically begins to shake her. “For fuck's sake, I don't care if you think I'm nuts, let's just _leave_!”

Castiel slowly rises, having silently considered the conversation before him. He rolls his shoulders back, fingers interlaced, stretching his arms behind him. He chews on his already chapped lips, lost in contemplation, tilting his head to the side and rubbing on his neck. Having drawn the eyes of his companions, as was surely his intention, Cas grabs Chuck by the lapels of his bathrobe and yanks him forward.

With a fierce stare, he demands, “Take the oath.”

“What?” questions Chuck.

“The oath, Charles,” Cas replies, leaning in so close that their noses nearly touch. “Take it.”

“Oath?” Charlie scratches her head and looks up at Sam. “What oath? Like, the Siegfried Oath?”

“Adolf Elizabeth Hitler?” Sam questions with a smirk.

Charlie laughs. “But it's not even springtime!”

Chuck, however, isn't laughing. Castiel has moved his hands from Chuck's lapel to the sides of his face. Chuck, in turn, has placed his hands similarly on Cas. They stare at each other with all the solemnity and seriousness of mind-melding Vulcans.

“I swear on the shards of Narsil,” Chuck says, voice as steady as his hands, “I swear on the moons of Tatooine. I swear on Aslan's mane, on Kirk's chair, and on Rincewind's hat, I am telling you the truth.”

“Oh,” Sam and Charlie realize aloud. “ _That_ oath.”

  
Castiel searches Chuck's soul with his eyes, nods, and leans back, letting go of Chuck's face. “I believe him,” he announces.

Sam, however, is less trusting. “I'm going to need a little more convincing.”

“You're doubting the word of a man who has solemnly sworn on Tolkien, Lucas, Lewis, Roddenberry, _and_ Pratchett?” Charlie backs away from Sam, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest. “That's just cold.”

“But he's using the z-word!” Sam replies in self-defense. “This guy, supposing he does, in fact, exist, never attacked him, and certainly doesn't sound like any zombie I've ever heard of. Sounds more like a...” He turns his hands over several times, searching for the right words. “Sounds more like something... I don't know, something Giger would come up with, I guess.” Sam shrugs. “It sounds nightmarish, but definitely not zombesque.”

“Doubting Thomas,” accuses Castiel. “'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.'”

“Get down from your cross and join the rest of us, Castiel,” snaps Sam. “You're no saint, no disciple, and certainly no messiah.”

Cas blinks. Once. Twice. “I... I would never—“

“Don't lie to me,” Sam quietly, yet forcefully, interrupts. “I've seen you now for what you are. If there's any monster at this convention, it's you.”

Charlie touches Sam's arm. “Hey, calm down. He didn't—“

“ _He assaulted my brother in an elevator_.” Sam's chest heaves with each breath, a mixture of rage and grief that he had successfully hidden until now. “He pretended to be my friend, Charlie, and I told him things about Dean that I would have never shared had I known.”

Cas reaches out for him. “But I am your friend.”

“Yeah, sure you are.” Sam chokes out a laugh and jerks away from the approaching hand. “God, no wonder neither of you would tell me what happened! He was ashamed, and you were too wrapped up in your self-deification, your little 'game' to realize what you'd done.” Sam closes his eyes, exhales, opens them again, and adds, “You manipulated me, and I bought it. You blinded me to the truth. You turned me against my brother, you son of a bitch.”

“Let he who is without sin throw the first stone, Sam,” Cas counters, emotionless.

A tinny ring shatters the uncomfortable shroud that has settled over the Streamline. Chuck jumps, then starts patting himself.  By the third ring, he has produced a chunky, compact phone from the depths of his bathrobe.

“Who'd you borrow that relic from?” asks Charlie. “Patrick Bateman? And how are you getting service?”

“Sat phone,” Chuck replies, waving it before hitting the button to answer. “Hello? Oh, hey, Aaron, listen, you don't need to—“ His face blanches further. “Shit, are you... Are you seri—Okay, man, just breathe. _Breathe_. Can I put you on speaker? I've got people here who—You only know Novak and Winchester. No, the other Winchester, though they're also kind of fighty right now. Not like Chernobyl fighty, though. Anyway, you called at a good ti—Yeah, yeah, I'm switching over now.” Chuck presses another button, and holds the phone out at arm's length.

“Hey, guys,” greets Aaron, his voice breaking through the static. “Good to know you're still alive. It's crazy out here on the interstate. Like a damn parking lot, and people keep getting out of their cars and just—” He pauses, coughing. “They're just standing around. Waiting, I guess.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Fuck if I know. Some of them are—” Aaron stops to hack up a lung again. “They're covered in this black stuff. Chuck, buddy, you aren't going to believe me, but I think they... God, I think they're _dead_. One lady looks like she's been, I dunno, _gutted_ , but she's still _moving_. They're still alive, but they aren't. Shit, man, I'm so confused right now.”

“How close are you?”

Aaron chuckles. “I never got out of Pennsylvania. I tried calling my parents, my crazy grandpa—I even called that one-nighter. You know, my gay thing from the bar?”

“Did he answer?”

“Yeah, but not for long. And all he did was scream.” There's a short series of clicks, followed by a bubbling sound and a sharp inhale, before Aaron speaks again. “He just screamed and screamed and there was crunching and—“ He dissolves once more into a series of coughs.

Sam narrows his eyes as the bubbling starts again. “Are you... Are you hitting a bong?”

“Don't judge, Gigantor,” Aaron admonishes, voice pinched with his inhale. “Not like I'm going anywhere. Besides,” he explains with a rasp, “if I'm going to die, then I'm sure as hell not going out sober.”

“So, no offense or anything,” starts Chuck, “but why did you call me?”

“No offense or anything,” Aaron responds, “but I had no one else to call. And I'm... Shit, I am so scared right now, Shurley.”

“It's alright, Aaron,” Castiel reassures. “The Lord is with you.”

Aaron breaks into hysterical laughter. “'The Lord is with me'? What the hell are you smoking, Novak?”

“Blueberry,” says Charlie from the peanut gallery.

“ _Nice_.”

“But He _is_ with you, Aaron Bass,” insists Castiel. “'The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.'”

“Whatever you say, but I'm ninety-nine percent certain that your Father's got his lids shut tight and his alarm unplugged.” The rustle of a sandwich bag fills the air. “Dammit. Knew I should've bought more than an eighth.”

“I keep telling you not to buy dirt,” Chuck sighs. “Quality over quantity, my friend.”

“Yeah, alright, you—crap, dropped the lighter.” A dull thud echoes over the line, followed by a long, shrill noise. “Sorry, my elbow hit the h—Oh, shit. Oh, holy shit.”

“What?” Chuck pulls the phone to his face, as though his voice could crawl in and pull Aaron out. “What's happening?”

“The horn. It set them—fuckfuck _fuck_ , their heads are exploding. They...” Aaron trails off, hyperventilating. “They're just _mouths_. They exploded and turned into _mouths_.” He starts to giggle. “So many teeth! So many sharp little teeth! The windshield's all gooey now, Chuck, it's just dripping off the—They're not waiting anymore. They're... They're all over the car, all over the car, just mouths at the windows. They're not waiting anymore because they were waiting for _me_.”

  
“Stay chill, Aaron,” Chuck says. “It's...” He swallows before he lies. “It's going to be okay. You're going to be fine.”

“Fuck, I can't breathe in here. It's so _hot_. There's so _many_. I... I can't even see out. I'm Goddamn _buried_ in... In a _swarm_.”

“What are they doing?” Cas inquires with a squint as Charlie covers her mouth, horrified and Sam looks shell-shocked. Moments ago they'd been joking; now, they were listening to someone die. This was real life; there was no save point to reload from, and Sam had no clue how he should react. He runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, remembering Jess and trying to distance himself from Aaron's terror, wondering if it had been hers, as well.

“They're rocking the car. Oh, God, they're trying to turn it over. They're going to turn over the car.” For a few moments, all that can be heard is the rhythmic pounding of hands against glass and metal. “I'm gonna die alone,” Aaron finally whispers, brokenly.

“I'm here, Bass,” says Chuck, eyes wet. “You aren't alone. I'm not going to leave you.”

“Are you... Are they there, too?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they are.”

“This is the end, isn't it? I mean the end end, of everything.” Aaron sighs. “So much for the covenant, huh?”

“Aaron.” Castiel moves closer to the phone, gripped tight in Chuck's hand. “Aaron, may I pray with you?”

“Do whatever you want, Novak. It's not like I'm going anywhere.”

“'The Lord is my shepherd,'” Cas begins. “'I shall not want.'”

“They have claws instead of hands. I—I never noticed until now. Oh my God, they looked normal, and then the horn, and now—And now—Oh my God.”

“'He makes me lie down in green pastures,'” Castiel continues. “'He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.'”

The cracking of glass shatters any calm Aaron had held onto. “They—They—Shit, they're breaking through. All teeth! Just teeth...”

“'He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.'”

“Get off me! _Get off me_!”

“'Even though I walk through the darkest valley—'“

“Help me! Oh God, oh God, just fucking _help me_!”

“'I fear no evil—''

Aaron screams, ear-piercing and full of pain. Next he gargles, throat full of blood. Within seconds, even that becomes muffled, then disappears.

“'—for you are with me,'” finishes Castiel as the sat phone blinks to signal the end of the call.

Chuck sinks to the floor and sobs.

“We have to get out of here,” Charlie says after a long silence.

“That's what I've been saying!” shouts Chuck. “We just listened to my friend die, Sam,” he says, beating his fists against the floor. “Is that enough proof for you?!”

Sam inhales, hard and fast, but doesn't answer.

“Dean,” Cas whispers.

“What?” Chuck wipes his eyes and blows his nose into his sleeve.

Castiel collects himself, then amends his statement. “The others. We need to round up any survivors and make a plan.”

“The plan,” starts Chuck, taking Charlie's hand and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet, “thank you. The plan is, 'let's get out while our heads are still intact.' Every man for himself. We don't have time to wait.”

“As the Picard of this convention,” Castiel replies, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am _not_ going down with this ship!”

“Yeah, I'm with him,” Charlie agrees. “I don't want to be assimilated.”

Sam sighs, and rubs his hand down his face, ending with a stroke to his chin. “No, no. As much as it pains me to say this, Cas is right. We can't just leave people behind if there's a chance we can help them.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do?” sputters Chuck.

“Hunt things? Save people?” Sam shrugs. “I don't know, Chuck, but we have to do _something_.”

“But why us?”

“Because we've been chosen,” Castiel says firmly, faithfully. “And because there's no one else to do it.”

Chuck sighs, resigned to his fate. “So what do you think we should do?”

“I think we should split up.”

“Oh, shit.” Chuck slams his head into his hands. “Cas, you did not just say that.”

“I thought you no longer had objections, Charles.”

“But you just cursed us, Cas!” exclaims Sam.

Castiel is thoroughly puzzled. “I did nothing of the sort.”

“Have you never played D&D?” asks Charlie, eyebrows climbing to her hairline. “Splitting the party rarely, if ever, ends well.”

“Not to mention that it's the cardinal rule of _Scooby Doo_ ,” adds Sam.

“Charles saw the one creature and no one else,” Cas begins. “I saw no one at all on my run this morning. The angel of death has already passed and touched this house; he will not do so a second time,” he says, confident. “We can cover more ground if we work separately.”

Charlie groans. “This plan has epic fail written all over it.”

“I am open to other suggestions.”

Unfortunately, and as he expected, there are none.

“Good. Now,” he continues, “where was everyone staying?”

Chuck dusts himself off, and pulls the case for his contacts from his apparent pockets of holding. Charlie produces a small mirror, unbidden, after digging around in her messenger bag; he takes it with a nod of his head, then sits back down to replace his sight, elaborating as he goes. “The Ghostfacers insisted on sleeping in the dealer's room so they could have electricity to finish their newest webisode. _Nursery Fire_ 's set up in their camper out behind the rec center.”

“Are they still insisting on broadcasting from here?” Charlie holds her chin, tapping her finger against her lips. “Because that could be handy.”

“Why?”

“That means they have satellite internet access. We can check the news, blog for help, that kind of thing.”

“Then that should be your first stop,” Cas says, nodding. “Where else, Charles?”

“I think Sarah's set up at Brown Brick,” Chuck replies, wincing as his contact ends up folded in his eye. He attempts to pinch it back out. “At least, that's where I left her and the spawn, and she had all of her luggage there. Becky was good enough for Tent City, but she could be anywhere.”

“Probably lurking around my tent,” mumbles Sam.

“How can you be mad— _ow!_ —at anyone who brings you breakfast? Didn't she make you biscuits? She makes— _dammit, my eye!_ —really good biscuits.”

“Yeah, but she delivered them wearing nothing but an apron.” Sam shivers, grimacing.

“Regardless,” Cas interjects, “we will find her. Though hopefully with more clothing.”

“So what's the plan, Glorious Strategist?” Charlie asks while dextrously catching Chuck's contact as he blinks it out and towards the floor.

“You three should collect Andy and Ansem, as I suggested, and then the five of you can rescue Sarah and her child,” Castiel orders. “I'll go after Dean. We will all keep an eye out for Becky, reconvene at the fire department, and then make our way out of town together.”

“No,” replies Sam, “I'm coming with you.”

“I'll be fine on my own, Sam.”

“I could care less if you're fine.” Sam steps forward, inches away from Castiel. “If you think for two seconds that I'm leaving you alone with my brother after what you told us this morning, then you're crazy.”

“Not to mention that we don't have time for you and Dean to duke it out,” Charlie adds, pulling Sam back by his shoulder.

“Yeah,” agrees Chuck, still poking and prodding a bare eyeball. “I've had enough explosions for one morning, please and thank you.”

“I understand your concerns, friends,” Cas placates, “but this arrangement makes the most sense. I assume that I am the only one with survival training—“

Charlie scrunches her nose. “You have survival training?”

“Many hats,” Sam explains.

“Oh, right.”

“If I might continue?” requests Cas. “I am the only one here with survival training. You three should travel together to protect each other should something occur. If I were to take one of you with me, you would only get in my way.”

“Don't we plebes get in your way already?” Sam scoffs.

Castiel frowns. “That is unfair, Samuel.”

“'Love your neighbor as yourself,'” Sam replies, arms spread wide. “Pretty sure that's in your favorite book, Novak, but I don't think you ever learned how. Then again,” he sneers, “you probably did, and only choose to follow it when it suits you. You know, just like the rest of your faith.”

Castiel turns away from Sam. He says nothing.

“Look, Sam.” Charlie tries again to turn Sam to face her, and is successful at last. “I know you're angry, and I know you want to protect Dean—“

“Damn right I do.”

“—but there's not time to discuss this right now. The only...” Charlie pauses, closes her eyes, and exhales. “The only _zombies_ we know are here was the one in Chuck's tent, though I think it's safe to say that the couple next door wasn't having a good time, either. If Cas says he can handle himself in Tent City and find Dean, then we need to trust him and focus our energy on finding everyone else.” She wraps him in a warm hug, and continues, “Dean will be okay. Cas will find him, I'm sure of it.”

Sam sighs, relenting, and hugs her back. “Fine, but if he tries anything—“

“We're in the middle of an emergent situation,” Cas says, taken aback. “What kind of man do you take me for?”

“Certainly not the good one I used to,” Sam mumbles.

Castiel stares at him, and for a moment, there's a glimpse of hurt behind his blue eyes. Within seconds, however, it is gone and the mask slides back onto his face. “I'll see you all at the fire station,” he says, and turns to go.

“Wait!” Chuck adjusts his second contact one last time, then digs around in his pockets, producing a walkie talkie. “Take this with you. We can use them to stay in touch; they'll be in range of each other, even across town.”

“Why do you have walkie talkies, Chuck?” Charlie wonders aloud.

“Certainly can't order the gophers around via cell phone out here in the boonies.”

“Alright, rephrase: Why do you have walkie talkies in the pocket of your bathrobe?”

“It was part of my costume for today,” Chuck explains. “I didn't have a chance to grab my towel and mini-Marvin.”

Charlie nods enthusiastically. “Excellent taste, good sir.”

Castiel sighs, and steps through the threshold and into the unknown. “God be with you,” he bids them as he leaves.

“And also with you,” Chuck automatically responds, to the collective confusion of his companions. “What? Childhood reflex, guys.”

“Hey, Castiel,” Sam calls out to his back. Cas turns to look over his shoulder. “Be careful out there.” Cas nods with a slight smile, then walks off down the road.

“That was good of you, Sam,” Charlie praises, patting her tall friend on the back.

“Not really.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I can't kill him later if he's already dead.”

Charlie sighs. “You are super protective of big brother, you know that? Like, to an unhealthy degree.”

Sam looks away. “Somebody has to be,” he quietly replies.

Chuck finally has had enough, and yells, “Does anybody want to give the traumatized alcoholic a clue?”

Charlie smirks and says, “I apparently owe Spengler and Zeddmore fifty bucks.”

Chuck gapes. “You mean he and Dean—“

“Yup.”

“But then they didn't—“

“Nope.”

“Dammit!” Chuck tosses his contact case in the air in defeat. It falls on the floor of the trailer with a clatter and a bounce. “So do I!”

***

The first things Dean notices upon waking are that he is sweating, hungover, and nowhere near his tent. He pushes himself up to sit, peeling his face out of his sketchbook and groaning all the way; at thirty-five, he has both no business and no interest sleeping on anything but a bed. Cursing the sun, he rubs the sleep out of his eyes one at a time with the heel of his hand. Dean's head is pounding, and his skin feels too tight. The vice inside his skull pinches his brain too tightly, and his vision swims if he blinks too quickly.

Dean stretches out, and takes note of his surroundings. He seems to have spent the night in a field; did he ever make it back to his tent? Taking a look at the items around him confirms that he did. An empty, broken bottle signifies the demise of his scotch. The inch-long butt of a crappy cigar alerts him to the fact that he'll need to find a toilet soon; though he could drink a pirate beneath the table, Dean certainly can't handle his tobacco. If he chose to smoke the whole cigar, then that must surely mean—

He picks up his old Walkman in haste, beaten and bound together with electrical tape, and pops open the cassette deck. The mix tape is simply labeled, “FIRE.” Dean snaps it closed again and slips it into the pocket of his jeans, jarring the cord for the headphones that still rest around his neck.

_Shit_. He hasn't listened to that tape in two or three years. Last night must have been truly awful.

A glance to his right shows the open sketchbook, surrounded on all sides by pieces of torn and crumpled paper. Dean starts to pick them up and unfold them, one at a time. The first is a portrait of an older, balding man with a cruel smile. He holds a scalpel in one hand and a heart in the other. He sneers at him from the paper, menacing, as if telling Dean that he's next.

The second is much easier to open, and Dean takes time to smooth down the picture of his mother's eyes. Even in red marker, they are kind, loving, forgiving—everything he wants, but has never earned. He smiles a little, refolds it carefully, and puts it in his other pocket. Nothing important ever goes in his jacket; after all, it isn't really his.

Sketch number three sends a chill down his spine. It's his own face that looks up at him this time, screaming in pain and terror. Hooks pierce the skin, pulling and tearing it away. There's no detail to the background, only angry red scribbles. Dean knows that when he checks the marker for this particular shade, the tip will be worn down to a nub and useless. He sighs and sets the drawing down on top of the first.

Dean recognizes the fourth picture immediately, because he always winds up drawing it when in an art fugue. The door to his childhood bedroom stands open. Fire curls up the walls, defying both geometry and physics. A small hand reaches out from the foreground towards the door and the figure lying beyond it, reaching back for him. Behind the prone woman is another person, tall and dark, obscured by shadow and flame. The pinprick eyes that look back from him are bile yellow; Dean swears he didn't grab that marker last night, but with the evidence literally staring him in the face, he concedes that he must have.

It's the only yellow marker he owns, and he never, ever chooses it, not when he's in his right mind. Dean lets this drawing join the small pile at his left. Though it's likely that he'll keep them for his inspiration folder, he certainly doesn't want to decipher them now.

Dean begins to piece together the torn bits of paper. Much to his surprise, it isn't filled with what Sam deems disturbing. Instead, Dean has wasted it with words, littered it with lettering. “Get me out!” says the speech bubble in the corner. “Help me...” reads the vertical text box on the side. “Let go of me,” begs the open spaces in between, over and over and over. “Pretty,” accuses the tiny letters in the center.

He restacks the pieces, tears them up into smaller bits, and tosses them over his shoulder like the confessional confetti it is.

Dean takes a deep breath, then opens the final drawing. As he suspected, it's a familiar pair of hands, covered in blood. Beyond them lies—

Beyond them lies—

He crumples the paper with a sudden burst of violence, and hurls it into the field as hard and as far as he can. Likewise, Dean pushes down against the rising emotional turmoil within, suppresses it back into a slow simmer at the pit of his stomach. He doesn't need to deal with that—not now, not ever.

Dean picks up the sketchbook, and is relieved to see his normal Lovecraftian horror. The detail is intricate; every scale and every tentacle is accounted for. The Great Old One sits enthroned in the woodcut waves, powerful and poised, majestic in its madness. Fishing boats scatter and tumble in its wake, tossed like driftwood in the churning, boiling sea. Dean would consider it one of his best if it wasn't simply a redraw of the tattoo that graces his right side. To his confusion, it's smudged and stained with sweat—

Dean sighs, setting down the book. He pulls the knife from the holster on his leg, and angles the serrated blade to look at the side of his face. Sure enough, there is Cthulhu in glorious red, rising from the depths of his ear canal.

Huh. He admires it, wondering if it's time to cover his face with art, Sam's opinion be damned. He turns the blade, trying to see how far back the tentacles sprawl, and spies a woman behind him.

Dean jerks his head around. Much to his surprise, he sees the Sailor Moon cosplayer from the day before. Her make-up is infinitely more horrifying today; where fake intestines merely sprung and coiled the day before, now they drag along the ground behind her, winding between her legs. A very convincing ripped liver hangs by a thread below a fallen, collapsed lung. There's something odd and black covering the organs—it reminds Dean a little of caviar, which he's never had, but has seen jarred in pretentious grocers.

He opens his mouth to say hello and congratulate her on an even better costume, but his words dry up as his gaze settles upon her face.

At least, it would, were it there. By Dean's estimation, Sailor Moon has been attacked by a large melon baller. Flesh has been scooped from her head, leaving a hollow hole filled with more of the dripping black ooze and, impossibly, rows of long, sharp teeth. One long pigtail clings hopelessly to a piece of scalp flapping loose from her head. Her arms are raised to shoulder height, no longer gloved in white, but painted with blood. Instead of fingers, her shaking hands end in a series of talons; meat falls from the bones even as he watches.

For the third time in his life, Dean Winchester is too terrified to move. When she lurches forward at an inhuman pace, however, some buried, primal instinct within him kicks into overdrive. He hops up from his seated position—distantly realizing that his back is going to hurt like a _bitch_ later—and holds the knife out in front of him in self-defense. Dean is absurdly proud of this particular weapon; it's an exact replica of the Demonslayer, a blade carried by the nameless, wandering hero of _Supernatural_.

“Leave it to you to have a sword-smith for a fan,” Castiel had said when he'd been presented with it. “At least something about you is sharp now.”

He feels angry just remembering it, and he lets the anger soothe his fear. There's nothing to be scared of; there's no need to cower like a little boy; there's no words to punish himself with later. He's drawn worse than the sick creature in front of him, battled monsters in his mind far more terrible.

In the seconds Dean spends staring down Death, he actually feels whole.

Purposed.

_Pure_.

The blade flies from his fingers and sinks itself into the gaping maw of the beast. It howls, though how it does so, Dean has no idea. The sound resonates in his ears, scratches through his bones, and makes every hair on his body stand on end. The head snaps backwards on its neck, splits in half, and vomits tar into the sky. Its body shrivels inward and collapses, seemingly self-mummified, having spat out all the glue that held it together.

Dean knows he should be sickened at how comfortable he feels stepping on what's left of its head, reaching down, grabbing the hilt, and reclaiming what's his. Like so much in his life, he chooses not to think about it. He kneels and wipes the muck off into the grass.

As he rises, Dean sees the horde coming, answering the call of their fallen comrade.

His fear finds him, seizes him again, and throws him back into the fire.

He runs.

***

Castiel picks his routine back up with ease upon reentering his tent. Having seen nothing and no one on his jog back from the Streamline, he feels comfortable enough to take his time washing himself with a damp cloth and dressing, though he laments the lack of a proper shower. Father only knows how loudly they'll smell by the end of it all.

He folds his running shorts and his shirt, and places them carefully in his suitcase, though he knows it won't be coming with him. In the unlikely event that he returns to this tent, however, Castiel would prefer to be ready to leave again quickly. On goes his white cotton boxers and a white undershirt; on goes the white button-down and slacks; he hesitates, then fastens his blue tie around his neck, and then on goes the suit jacket.

Castiel slides his arms into the sleeves of his tan overcoat and feels at peace. Though he'd considered dressing differently, Cas knows that, for his upcoming mission, it will be best to feel comfortable.

This is his armor, and what God has provided, he will not throw away.

“Cas? Hey, Cas, are you there?” Chuck whispers over the walkie talkie. Castiel plucks it from where it lies on his pillow.

“I am. Over.”

“Just checking on you. It's been, like, forty minutes since we heard from you. Sam was worried—“

“I was not!” comes Sam's voice, distant in the background.

“—and we were wondering if you'd found Dean over in the tents.”

“I haven't looked yet,” Cas explains. “I had to get dressed. Over.”

“You had to—Ugh, fine, whatever. Could you maybe pick up the pace? We're all packed up here and heading down the road to the rec center.”

“I'm nearly finished,” he replies, coolly, retrieving a brown canvas rucksack from beneath his cot. He slings it over and across his back. “Just needed my bug-out bag. Over.”

“Oh, okay, well—wait, why do you have a bug-out bag packed for a convention, Cas?”

“'All our steps are ordered by the Lord; how then can we understand our own ways?' Over.”

“That's... That's really not an answer.”

“'Do not answer fools according to their folly,'” responds Cas, “'or you will be a fool yourself.' Over.”

“Is he _always_ this Biblical when he's coming down?” Chuck asks, exasperated.

“Every fucking time,” says Sam. “Wait 'till he hits Psalms. Completely unintelligible.”

“'All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to one who understands and right to those who find knowledge.' Over.”

Chuck sighs. “Just hurry up and get Dean, okay?”

“I was on my way until you interrupted me. Over.”

Chuck curses a goodbye, and the line goes dead.

Castiel wraps his rosary around his left wrist, and takes a lingering last look at the contents of his tent. He turns his right hand over as it hangs at his side, and a long, slender silver blade falls from its hidden pocket in the inside of his oversized sleeve. With a prayer on his lips, he opens the flap to the tent, and steps out into the sunshine once more.

***

Dean has discovered that, when running for one's life, one loses all sense of time and direction. He's fairly certain that he's passed the farmhouse thrice, but for all he's paid attention, he could be over the Dakota border by now. Dean doesn't dare head towards Ardmore proper, or back to his tent—why would he lead the dozens of dead giving him chase back to his friends?

And yet, oddly enough, there looms the outskirts of town in front of him. Why his feet have chosen to find their way after so long in the wilderness, Dean doesn't care to know. All he's truly aware of is that he's quickly running out of steam, and the enemy is both gaining and multiplying quickly. Dehydrated, achy, and plagued by a throbbing, blinding headache, Dean is a few minutes away from giving up and joining the demonic throng behind him.

There's a fairly sturdy, two-story, flat-roofed building ahead, though. Maybe he can channel his inner ninja and climb up the side. Or maybe he could just sprout feathers and fly, an option which seems just as likely as he flails closer and closer to his goal, fighting against the tall grass every step of the way.

Dean takes a moment to glance behind him, and realizes he's lost as one of the horde explodes three feet away. The dead man's ribs rip backward through his spine and stretch out to either side. They bend and flex like extra arms. He uses his claws to rip and tear at his own face, making way for a never-ending gush of oily black. The creature turns to the sky and screams, mouth stretching impossibly wide, teeth gnashing against themselves, broken ribs fluttering.

As he turns to run what he's certain will be his final steps, Dean looks to the top of the drab gray building, and sees his saving grace. Castiel stands on the roof, hands and face and clothes covered in blood; his coat flaps behind him in the breeze like an odd set of wings. Dean sees emotion on Cas' face, and it propels him forward, for Cas doesn't show disdain or dislike or dismay.

Dean sees relief.

“Jump!” Castiel shouts, flattening himself to the roof and stretching out his hand. “Jump, Dean! I'll pull you up!”

“It's too high!” Dean can feel the hands of the lost closing in around him, grabbing for his clothes. “I can't make it! I'm not a fucking gazelle!”

“I wasn't asking you a question!” Cas yells above the low hum of the horde. “I was giving you an order, Winchester!”

“But—“

“ _JUMP_.”

Dean sees a rotting piece of lattice fence resting against the side of the building. He scrambles to climb atop it as claws sink into his left sleeve; Dean shakes it off his arm, and reaches up, propelling himself toward the heavens with the last of his strength. Castiel grabs hold of his bare left arm with both hands and jerks him up and onto the roof as the wood collapses beneath him. The horde captures nothing but his father's leather coat, snatching and dragging the right sleeve as well, pulling it off of his arm and peeling the jacket from Dean's body like a snake sheds dead skin.

His watch beeps the hour.

Time for the panel.

**Author's Note:**

> The accompanying photoset for this story can be found [here](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/post/97844445112/writers-strike-by-shiphitsthefan-wip-mature) and was created by [betty days](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/), who is an excellent human. If you liked this story, I would greatly appreciate your reblogging it.
> 
> Check out the tag ["writers' strike"](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/tagged/writers%27-strike) on my [tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/) for some of my research and inspiration for this fic. Beware of spoilers!
> 
> You can also find me on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan), where I occasionally chirp witty things.
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3


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